


Sanguine Allemande

by jane_x80



Category: NCIS, The Mentalist
Genre: Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s01e23 Red John's Footsteps, Episode: s06e25 Aliyah, F/M, M/M, Multi, NCIS Reverse Bang Challenge, Polyamory, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-02 10:39:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18809467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: After the events of "Red John's Footsteps" (s01e23), Patrick Jane learns that his old love Tony DiNozzo might be on Red John's radar. He makes his way to DC to check on him, only to find that Tony is recovering from a fight with a Mossad operative, and an interrogation in Israel. The fallout is both injuries of a physical and emotional nature. Patrick decides that he can't just watch Tony's life fall apart and decides to stand up with Tony and for him, something he should have done a long time ago. And maybe, he'll rediscover what he lost so many years ago.





	1. Patrick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for Sanguine Allemande by jane_x80](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650197) by [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots). 



> This is the first of the two 2019 NCIS Reverse Bang stories that I wrote. Two! So I will have another story to post later this month 😉
> 
> This story is a crossover between NCIS and The Mentalist, and takes place right after NCIS s06e25 Aliyah, and The Mentalist s01e23 Red John's Footsteps, which coincidentally were aired on the exact same night on 19 May 2009 on CBS. I do also refer to a couple scenes from the pilot episode of The Mentalist. So be aware of spoilers! And for those who don't know the show, The Mentalist stars the gorgeous Simon Baker as Patrick Jane. Check out the [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mentalist) for more information. Hubby and I used to watch this show and we watched every episode until the series ended. I was a big fan! So it was awesome to be able to write a crossover between NCIS and The Mentalist.
> 
> As luck would have it, this artwork prompt (original to be found [here](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/solariana/7360051/43992/43992_original.png)) was by my lovely and talented friend, [Red_Pink_Dots](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots). Thank you for such a wonderful, rich prompt and your support and feedback throughout the writing process! You are the absolute best! *bisous*
> 
> Also, a huge thank you goes out to my beta [jesco0307](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesco0307/pseuds/jesco0307) who managed to beta this story despite RL challenges. You're a champ! Thank you so much! This story would be so much poorer without you. I did add a couple of chapters in the middle, based on your and RPD's comments, which I didn't have time to run by either of you, so hopefully they're not too awful. All remaining errors are mine, of course.
> 
> The music I listened to to write this story was all by Johann Sebastian Bach:  
> * [Prelude No 1 in C Major, BWV 846](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMVkQ70I88) (the first Prelude in the Well Tempered Klavier) performed by Tzvi Erez  
> * [Cello Suite No 2 in D minor, BWV 1008](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa5yony2CeA) performed by Yo-Yo Ma  
> * [Goldberg Variations, BWV 988](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_sIdXTqXKU) performed by Andras Schiff
> 
> On to the story!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler alert: Here be spoilers for the season finale of s1 The Mentalist (Red John's Footsteps). Don't say I didn't warn you!

**Chapter One: Patrick**

[](https://i.imgur.com/L7lANDG.png)

It had been a week since it happened and Patrick still wasn’t feeling like himself again. Although he hadn’t really felt like himself since Angela and Charlotte were murdered. Or maybe even as far back as when he’d lost their sweet Anthony.

But Patrick had gone to work, done the usual stuff, annoyed Lisbon, impressed Van Pelt and Rigsby, and occasionally made Cho raise an eyebrow at his antics, solved another case. Yet it kept gnawing at him. Eating at his insides. Chewing him up from the inside out.

It had been a week since Patrick had had to pick up a shotgun and shoot Hardy, the only solid link they’d had to Red John. Patrick had been ready to die, even, to bring Red John in, but apparently, he wasn’t as single minded as he’d thought he was. He might have been ready to die to do it, but apparently, he wasn’t about to sacrifice Lisbon and that innocent girl Maia, to Hardy, and by extension to Red John. He _couldn’t_ let that happen. So when he, with his infinite capability to just fucking notice things, saw that Hardy was quietly fussing with something even though he was securely cuffed to the gurney, Patrick had thought that this was going to be trouble. He didn’t even have time to call out a warning because Hardy had been so goddamned fast. He picked the lock of the cuffs so quickly that Patrick felt the need to give him props for that. Because picking cuff locks wasn’t difficult, per se, but he’d performed under duress, injured, and with such great speed that Patrick had to give him that. And the speed at which he’d gone for the other cop’s weapon and shot him with it had been impressive, too.

Patrick couldn’t help but blame the cop for taking his eye off of the prisoner, though. Even though he could hear Angela telling him he was blaming the victim, the man was a trained officer of the law and Hardy was a personal protégé of Red John. _Come on_. Keeping eyes on him at all times should be a given. He shouldn’t have stopped watching Hardy, and Hardy should have been more securely restrained – hands cuffed on both sides, shackles on his feet, the works – even if he was injured. No one should underestimate the will of someone under Red John’s murderous thrall. Patrick knew that intimately.

So when he’d seen Hardy start moving his hand on the gurney, Patrick had picked the shotgun out of the police car. What for, he didn’t quite know yet, but he knew that despite his aversion to firearms and violence, he couldn’t continue so unprepared. And when Hardy had turned the weapon on Lisbon, on Teresa, who had somehow wormed her way into his incredibly controlled existence and become a fucking friend, Patrick couldn’t just let her die just so he could interrogate Hardy. Not even if it led them straight to Red John. Not even then.

He’d reacted without thought, blowing a hole through Hardy’s torso with the double barreled shotgun. He didn’t even know he could hit anything with a gun, so maybe it was a good thing it had been a shotgun because he’d never really used a small handgun and would have probably missed by a mile. Patrick had never enjoyed violence, had never craved it like some of the other kids he’d grown up with. He preferred to talk his way into and out of everything. But yet he’d pulled the trigger and killed a man. And he would have done it again, to save the lives of Lisbon and anyone else. He couldn’t allow Red John or any of his minions to take even one more life, if he could stop it.

He would have done this and more to protect Angela and Charlotte. He wished that he’d been given the opportunity to try. He would have killed to protect _Anthony_ , even though Anthony was also lost to him now, and that was no one’s fault but his own. He didn’t regret his actions from the past week, but he did mourn Hardy’s loss, the loss of someone who had a direct link to Red John.

A week later, after a stint with the CBI shrink and Teresa, Van Pelt, Rigsby, hell even Cho had tried to counsel him about the shooting, how it was a good shooting, and how grateful Teresa had been that Patrick had saved her life, a week later, there was a chasm within Patrick because he couldn’t deal with it. He’d thought that the math was simple: get to Red John _at any cost_ , and then kill him. Rid the earth of the scourge that was the man who had taken everything he had away from Patrick, leaving him only with a smiley face painted in his wife’s blood. Because the man who had killed Angela and his baby Charlotte didn’t deserve to be on this earth when they weren’t, when he had so cruelly expunged them from this life as a punishment for Patrick’s vanity. It was simple. Whatever the cost, Patrick would get to Red John and kill him. Look him in the eye as life drained from them. In his fantasies, Red John was a faceless blur, and Patrick killed him in a myriad of ways – strangulation, stabbing, gunshot, baseball bat, whatever caught his fancy and his imagination that day – but Patrick always killed him without mercy. And it always felt so _good_.

But his math turned out to be so incredibly wrong. Apparently, he didn’t want Red John at any cost. Lisbon’s life was too dear. Too high of a price to pay. And he really didn’t like how he felt when he realized that he had taken a life. He’d thrown the shotgun down, because it felt _wrong_ in his hands. And when Hardy had died taunting him about the fact that now he wouldn’t be able to get to Red John through the dying man, Patrick had felt so torn and confused. Because yes, he wanted Red John, he wanted Hardy to talk. They would have made him talk. Between himself and Lisbon, Hardy would have given them some credible leads. But that Patrick had chosen Lisbon over Red John and killed Hardy for it, it felt like a punishment he’d deserved. Patrick had chosen his friend over avenging his dead wife and child. And it hadn’t felt like a wrong decision, but yet he felt as if he deserved the punishment of losing Hardy as a way to Red John.

This new math, it was all eating away at him, and he had no idea how to stop it.

He needed Angela to help him figure it out. That had always been how things were between them. Patrick had a very loose connection to people in general, using them as he saw fit. This was a legacy of his father’s. He used people, he used everything and everyone he could except for Angela and Anthony. And after she was born, Charlotte had been added to that very short list. And even though Anthony had never even met Charlotte, Patrick had never been able to forget him, or lose those feelings that he’d had for him.

Anthony had never met Charlotte because he had chosen not to run away with him and Angela, all those years ago. Back when they were young and stupid. When everything made sense. When all they knew was their love for each other. When everyone was alive and they all felt as if they would never die. Immortality was the realm of the young. Charlotte never even made it to the age where she really understood death and loss. Never felt that feeling of immortality because she’d never truly contemplated death. And that thought was crippling him. He’d failed Charlotte, and Angela, and now he’d even compromised himself.

Red John’s death wasn’t worth it at any cost. That was the truth of it. And with this realization, now Patrick wasn’t sure how he was supposed to live with himself.

Because while Charlotte had been too young to understand death, unfortunately, now all that Patrick was, was loss and grief and death. All that he had been living for since he lost his girls was the death of Red John at _any_ price. In his head, Patrick had thought that he would probably kill himself once Red John was dead. But now he felt that even that wasn’t true anymore.

Patrick laid on his extremely comfortable leather couch at CBI, staring out the window, lost in thought. He was empty inside and had nothing left to live for… except that he _did_. Anthony wasn’t his anymore, but he was still alive. Patrick had stayed away, distanced himself even though Anthony had reached out to him after Angela and Charlotte had died. Anthony left him numerous voicemail messages, sent flowers at their funeral, mailed cards to his house – how did Anthony even have his address? – and he still kept reaching out to him every so often. But Patrick had not responded to his overtures. No matter how much he wanted to.

In the wake of Red John, Patrick had decided that he couldn’t drag Anthony down with him. He couldn’t put him in Red John’s sights. He couldn’t lose anyone else. He only had one person left that he loved with all his being, in all this world. One person who knew him, who knew Angela, who had loved them both equally, and who both he and Angela had worshipped. He couldn’t allow Red John to target Anthony now. He couldn’t. Anthony was the only one left in the world that he loved and the distance that had grown between them was the only thing that had saved Anthony. Even though in the beginning, Patrick had been so angry that Anthony wasn’t choosing to run away with him and Angela. Even though Patrick had felt that to be a betrayal of everything they had shared together, and that Anthony did not, in fact, love them in the way that he’d claimed to. He still loved Anthony.

He thought back to that day, so long ago. It was the second summer that Anthony had run away from whatever hellhole of a summer camp his father had sent him to. That first summer, Anthony had stumbled into the fair, quiet and shy, begging for a job. Any job. Patrick’s father had wanted to beat him up, but Anthony managed to get a job sweeping and cleaning. He’d slept in an old sleeping bag in the shadow of one of the tents, and had been paid next to nothing, but they fed him and he worked hard, keeping to himself. Angela had been the one to befriend him and bring him into their circle. He and Angela were secretly in love and saving up to run away from their parents, and when Angela brought Anthony to one of their trysts, even though Patrick had wanted to hate him, he found that he couldn’t. It was as if Anthony was the missing piece that completed him and Angela. Anthony was sweet and kind, he cared about people, and stray animals, he wanted to do good and to be a good person. Despite the fact that he had been treated no better by his father than Patrick had by his own, Anthony had not accrued that hardness and lack of empathy that Patrick, and to a certain extent, Angela had. Anthony was still pure on the inside, even though his father had used him and abused him in different ways. He was the antithesis of almost everyone Patrick had every known, but Patrick knew the kind of childhood Anthony had had. Patrick understood him, and he folded him in with Angela, as people he needed to protect.

When Angela brought Anthony in to share their bed, it felt right. It was the missing piece. But at the end of that first summer, Anthony went back to his boarding school for his final year of high school. He promised to return to them the following summer, and be with them forever. Patrick and Angela had long since given up even the idea of an education, and they had vowed to themselves that they would run from their parents, live somewhere beyond their reach, and when they had children, their child would be able to have a home that they could call their own, and go to school. Have friends. A white picket fence. And as much money as Patrick could con from fuckwits who deserved it for believing in the absurd. But after meeting Anthony, their dreams had expanded to include him in the picture. That they three would face the world together.

Anthony had come back to find them the summer after he graduated from high school. They spent an idyllic summer with Anthony, but at the end of it, Anthony broke down and told them that he couldn’t go with them yet. He’d gotten an athletic scholarship to go to college, and he needed to find his way and find himself before he could give himself fully to Angela and Patrick… Suffice it to say, Patrick hadn’t taken it well. He’d stormed away, refusing to hear Anthony begging him to understand, and that he would come back to them when he was ready. That he loved them both, and couldn’t imagine going through his life without them.

Patrick knew that Angela had understood Anthony, and willingly let him go. And when Patrick grumbled at that, all she said was that Anthony would come back to them, stronger and better, and complete them again one day. She never begrudged his need to learn who he was before truly committing to them. She never gave up hope that he would come back. Even though Anthony never did, all because Patrick had refused to forgive him.

But now, Patrick was glad that Anthony had chosen his own path. Because that path had led him away from Angela and Charlotte and most importantly, away from Patrick. Patrick, who had called down the wrath of a serial killer with his own hubris. A ‘psychic’, for god’s sakes. Fleecing people of their money. Pretending to make contact with the dead. As if that was possible. The dead stayed dead. Patrick was no psychic because there was no such thing as psychics. Although some days, Patrick knew that the only real punishment that would be fair was for him to actually develop psychic powers and then be confronted with the specters of his dead wife and daughter every waking moment. Blaming him for what happened. Because that was what he deserved.

Anthony didn’t deserve to be dragged back into this nightmare.

For months after Anthony’s refusal to run away with them, Patrick had raged against him. So hurt by Anthony’s rejection of them. Angela had been the one to calm him. Angela had been the one to assure him of Anthony’s feelings for them, and that it had hurt Anthony even more to not go with them. But Anthony had a different path to walk. He was going to college. He needed to find his own way, and by letting Anthony go, he would eventually find his way back to them. Angela had been convinced of it, the whole time. Even to her last breath, she knew that Anthony loved them and her love for Anthony had never waned. Despite it all, neither had Patrick’s.

It was a strange sort of relationship that they had had, the three of them. Because Patrick had loved Anthony, too. As much as he loved Angela. It was as if Angela and Anthony, together, completed those missing chunks of his heart.

But if Anthony had come with them, then he would be dead, too. He would have been home with Angela and Charlotte on that fateful night. He would have been slaughtered, just like Angela and Charlotte had been. He would have been another bloody smiley face for Patrick to weep over.

Anthony’s insistence on finding his own path had saved him, and Patrick had to be grateful for that, whatever his thoughts had been on losing Anthony all those years ago. He was grateful that Anthony was alive. That Red John had no idea he existed. Anthony would live on. It was a comfort to Patrick.

Although he’d been calling on a weekly basis – Patrick ignoring each and every one of his call. But Patrick hadn’t heard from him in two weeks now. He couldn’t help but worry.

Had Red John somehow found Anthony? He kept an eye on the news in DC, just in case, but it didn’t seem as if Red John was active anywhere near DC. And there was nothing in the news about anything happening to a federal agent in DC.

But yet, there were no calls from Anthony.

Patrick tried to convince himself that he could live with a hole that was consuming him, and that Anthony was fine. Anthony was better off as far away from him as possible. Everything was fine. Patrick could handle it and wait for the next opportunity to get to Red John. It was the only thing keeping him alive.

Except that Anthony still hadn’t called. Worry niggled in that gaping hole in his chest, worming its way into what he would have thought was a cavern of emptiness. And it wouldn’t go away. Patrick was going to ignore it, and dismiss his worries. He hadn’t seen Anthony in years, and they weren’t the threesome in love anymore. Not the way they had been. But as they were working their latest case, Van Pelt was going through flight manifests to trace the movement of their suspect, going back several years, trying to tie the suspect to over a dozen crimes. And a name caught Patrick’s eye.

_Anthony D. DiNozzo, Jr._

On an inbound flight to Sacramento a week or so after Angela’s and Charlotte’s funeral. During that dark time when Patrick had been confined to a mental institution, under the care of Sophie Miller. Anthony had probably knocked on his door or asked around about him. He could have gotten on Red John’s radar from that far back, and Patrick hadn’t even taken a phone call or replied to an email from him. Anthony didn’t deserve this, unknowingly being made a target of this insidious serial killer. Patrick couldn’t just sit here and let things happen to Anthony.

He knew what he had to do now. And now he was incredibly anxious to go and carry it out. But he couldn’t leave things unfinished with his team. First, he solved the case they were on quickly, pointing out everything he’d noticed without fanfare. No showboating, no mind games, no jokes. He sipped his already cold tea without even noticing its temperature, ensuring that the team had enough to go on. Afterwards, he must have really looked ill or something, anxious to do what he needed to do, that feeling of dread gnawing even further, spreading into more and more parts of his body, because Lisbon ended up sending him home and telling him to get some rest.

Patrick nodded and left without a fuss. He packed some clothes into a bag, got into his car, and set off on a road trip. He called Minelli to request a leave of absence, implying that the shooting had affected him more than he’d originally realized, and the man told him to take as much time as he needed. He then called Lisbon’s office number, late at night, when he knew she wouldn’t be there and left her a brief message, informing her of his leave of absence. But he didn’t tell her that he needed to get to Anthony because Red John surely knew that he had been the one to kill Hardy. He’d taken someone near and presumably dear to Red John, and the man had already demonstrated his willingness to avenge any perceived slights on him. So he kept on driving. He could fly, sure, but he knew that Red John would track him and Red John would get to DC before he would. Red John had minions everywhere. He was convinced of it now. And in case Red John was unaware of Anthony’s existence and his importance to Patrick, or if Red John knew of Anthony but did not know the place he held in Patrick’s heart, Patrick could not just give away his destination too quickly. So he drove across the country in what seemed to be no real hurry, stopping along the way to sleep and eat, and speak with anyone who cared to converse, although he ignored calls from Lisbon and the team. Mostly the only people who tended to speak to him were wayward children, and he felt the need to point them back to their parents because he knew, better than anyone, the pain that came with the loss of a child. And he didn’t want any of these children’s parents to share that pain. So he sent them back to their parents and asked them to stay safe.

It took him over a week to get to DC from Sacramento. He’d taken some smaller side trips and had affected an unhurried pace, even though it continued to worry him that Anthony _still_ hadn’t called him. He didn’t allow himself to seem as if he had a destination in mind, doing things as whimsically as he could. And when he arrived in DC, he spent a night doing nothing but wander around, taking in the sights. He wandered around the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, stopped to eat Italian ices and sat under the cherry trees, just taking in DC. This was the place that Anthony had called home for almost ten years now. Angela somehow always kept track of where Anthony was, and what he was doing after he graduated from Ohio State University, and when he joined his first police department, Angela had been so proud. Patrick had only thought how useful it would be to have Anthony back after he’d learned all he could about being a policeman, because then they would have someone with an in to law enforcement that they could exploit to bolster his psychic act. It didn’t need to just be cold reading people, he could also have a background check done to make the performances even better.

The irony. That now Patrick was a consultant to the CBI and solving crimes. Helping people instead of conning them.

Finally, Patrick felt like he had meandered enough around the city, and in the cover of darkness, he made his way to an apartment building and was knocking on a door.

“Go away,” he heard a muffled voice call through the door.

He knocked even louder.

“I’m tired and I haven’t slept for four days. I don’t care if we caught a case and you’re hell bent on punishing me, I’m sleeping in my _own_ bed tonight, Gibbs!”

Patrick continued to knock insistently.

Finally the door was wrenched open, and a familiar face was glaring at him. Older, certainly, but no less beautiful than he ever was “Gibbs, I’m in no shape…” green eyes widened in shock and his sentence trailed away to nothing.

“Hello, Anthony,” Patrick felt a real smile bloom on his face. He hadn’t smiled like this in a long time.

“J-jane?” Anthony stuttered.

Patrick took in the man that had answered the door and his blue eyes narrowed. Anthony had his arm in a sling and a cast poked through. He had dark circles around his eyes, and he looked gaunt. He looked exhausted, clad in a threadbare t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Who did this to you?” Patrick growled, herding him in, and looking up and down the hallway, closing the door behind him. He flipped all three locks and looked at Anthony. “Was it him? Did he come for you?”

Anthony stared at him, mouth open, looking completely confused. “Who?”

“Red John!”

“What?” Anthony’s brows creased into a worried frown. “What the hell is going on, Patrick? Why would Red John come after me?”


	2. Tony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I quote some dialogue from the Pilot episode of the The Mentalist. For a full transcript of the episode, please click [here](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-mentalist&episode=s01e01).

**Chapter Two: Tony**

[](https://i.imgur.com/XIW9aOn.png)

Tony stared at the apparition standing in his apartment. Patrick Jane. His first love. Patrick and Angela, both of them had been _it_ for him in his final year of high school. He would have given everything to be with them, and had been bucking to keep getting expelled from all of the boarding schools that Senior kept sending him to, in order to escape and run away with them. But then, after Remington Military Academy in Providence, finding his niche and a talent in basketball, all of a sudden he had a different version of the future open up to him. He could go to college, get a degree, find out his own worth, and _then_ he would go and spend the rest of his life with Jane and Angela.

He needed to see this through. He needed to see if he could stand on his own two feet, make his way through the world without Senior, without Jane to protect him from those who could hurt him, and Angela to soothe away all of his pain. He needed to see if he could learn to be a man, once he was free of Senior’s influence. OSU was so far out of Senior’s control, and Tony wouldn’t know anyone there, that it had felt like a kind of freedom that Tony could not resist. Even at the expense of asking Angela and Patrick to wait for him.

Patrick hadn’t taken it well and banished him, but Angela had kept in touch with him on a regular basis throughout the years. And he had welcomed every single letter Angela had sent him, and written back long missives that bared his soul, more often than not. Over the years, through their correspondence, Tony had probably fallen even more in love with her and with Patrick, and his love for Charlotte, who would have been a daughter to him as much as to Angela and Patrick could not even be measured.

His misery at their deaths had crippled him so much that he couldn’t even get there for their funerals. Besides, Patrick had still been angry at him, angry enough that Angela’s last letter to him had advised him to continue working at NCIS for the time being. Patrick wasn’t ready for him yet, but she felt certain he would be within the year. Losing Angela and Charlotte had broken him, broken something inside him, and knowing that Patrick was still so angry with him was unbearable. He’d been overwhelmed, and yet he had still found a way to go to Sacramento to seek out Patrick. He needed to talk to him, to beg his forgiveness for not being there to protect Angela and Charlotte. Because he _should_ have been there with them that night. He should have saved them. At least bought them time to run. Defended them in some way. Patrick would have been fine if all he’d lost was Tony, and if Angela and Charlotte had survived.

But instead, when he’d heard the news that the renowned psychic Patrick Jane’s wife and child had been murdered by the notorious serial killer Red John, because of a TV show. And they always cut away to the clip of Patrick on that talk show, doing his psychic act, everyone buying everything he was selling. _True demonic evil burns like fire. It burns with a terrible, cold, dark flame. I force myself to look into that flame and I see an image of the evildoer. In this case, Red John. He's an ugly, tormented little man. A Ionely soul_.

Words that had attracted Red John’s attention to Patrick. Words that Tony knew Patrick must torture himself with over and over, blaming himself for the death of his wife and daughter at the hands of a psychopath. Even though it had been Red John who had murdered their beautiful Angela and that innocent creature Charlotte.

Tony had been helpless and impotent with grief and anger, and at the time, he couldn’t even find Patrick. He had no idea where Patrick had gone. All he’d wanted then was for Patrick to punish him, for not being there. For not protecting Angela and Charlotte. For not turning his back on the different path that he had wanted to walk. For abandoning them and allowing Angela and Charlotte to go to their deaths. Tony had even tortured himself by looking at the crime scene photos at the Sacramento CBI offices. He’d charmed someone in their records department into allowing him a peek at the evidence of the murders of Angela and Charlotte Jane, because he’d needed to see for himself that Angela was dead.

And she was. Tony would never forget what he saw in those pictures. He wasn’t a novice to gruesome crime scenes, but this was _Angela_. And _Charlotte_. Angela had been the love of his life. It wasn’t like looking at any other crime scene photos.

All he knew was that up until then he had only been biding his time, waiting for Patrick to stop being so angry with him. He knew that he would have eventually been back with both Angela and Patrick again, one day. He’d believed Angela when she said that Patrick would be ready for him in time. That Patrick had never stopped loving him either, and that was why he had been so angry. Why he had held on to that anger for so long.

But the pictures definitely proved that Angela and Charlotte were dead. He had tried to find Patrick, but he could not be found, which meant that he had not wanted to be found. Tony had been forced to return to DC, his future in shambles, his head all over the place, unable to focus for a long time, haunted by the pictures of Angela’s mutilated body. Of the smiley face drawn in Angela’s blood, on the wall over the bed. Of the fact that Red John had taken the time to paint Angela’s toenails in her own blood, that sick fuck.

But he’d tried to send Patrick letters, every so often, never hearing back from him. Finally, when Patrick resurfaced at the California Bureau of Investigation, of all places, about a year ago, Tony had started calling him. Once a week, or thereabouts. And even though Patrick had never actually answered a phone call, it was nice to hear his voice in the outgoing message. Tony had left him voicemails, checking in, sometimes saying a lot, sometimes not. And during this whole time, Jane could have easily disconnected his number and switched to a different number. Yet he didn’t.

Tony took that to be a sign that Jane was slowly accepting his presence back in his life. Maybe one day, Patrick would forgive him enough that he would be able to beg Patrick for forgiveness for not being there for Charlotte and Angela. And maybe, Patrick would be able to let him shoulder some of that – undeserved – blame that he was carrying around, all by himself. Maybe Jane would let Tony find some way to atone for his own mistakes. Chief of which was choosing to go to college, instead of running away with Angela and Jane the way they had it planned out.

And now here he was. Patrick Jane. Out of the blue, Jane had knocked on his door and now his hands were running over Tony’s body, not in a sexy way, but more in a way that felt as if he were taking stock. Figuring out what was wrong with Tony, using just his hands.

“What the hell is going on, Patrick? Why would Red John come after me?” Tony asked, wondering if this was some weird hallucination he was experiencing. Had Ducky spiked his hot chocolate earlier? Because it was true that Tony always reacted incredibly strongly to painkillers. But no, probably not. Ducky had let him drive home without protest. If Ducky had secretly dosed him, he would have ensured that someone drove Tony home. And besides, Tony’s arm was killing him right now, so hallucination or not, he was definitely _not_ on painkillers. And another reason why Ducky wouldn’t have just drugged him up was that he was siding with Gibbs with whatever it was that Gibbs was mad at him for these days.

After the thing with Rivkin, Tony should have been on medical leave, recovering from a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm, but no, instead Tony had been taken on what he knew was supposed to be a one way trip to Israel. Where Eli David had tried to take him down in an interrogation room that he had even denied was an interrogation room, the chump. As if Tony didn’t know when someone was interrogating him. As if Tony wasn’t a fucking professional at this. Eli David, like his daughter, had no idea who Tony was and what he had done to get where he was. Nobody else had ever had to remake themselves so fully in order to stand on their own the way Tony had. He learned to play people from the best, from Patrick Jane, from Patrick’s father and the other folks at the fairs. He’d learned some difficult lessons from Senior. If it was one thing he knew, it was how to use people. Seriously. They thought infiltrating the mafia had been difficult? Those Macaluso guys were easy to fleece. The easiest marks Tony had ever seen. So secure in their own organization. So easy to read. Hell, the people he’d known from his time at the fair would have been able to do it even more successfully than he had. And he’d taken the Macalusos down. So yeah, certainly, Tony had no problem seeing right through Eli David. The man had been so full of himself, so confident that he could strip Tony of his defenses, that he didn’t even see the trap coming.

But even after he had acquitted himself with Eli David and proven that Rivkin had been in the US on David’s orders, even after he had been told to leave the country by Vance and the DOJ, Rivkin had stayed and continued to be Ziva’s boyfriend because Eli David had ordered him to finish his mission. That had earned Tony a ticket back home to DC, but it burned Tony that Vance wasn’t holding David accountable for the death of the US citizens that his scheme had caused. He wasn’t being held accountable for the actions of Rivkin and the other terrorists. He hadn’t been held accountable for the death of NCIS Special Agent Caitlyn Todd, Tony’s best friend, either. In Tony’s estimation, Rivkin, David, and by extension Mossad had conducted acts of terror upon the US and yet there had been no consequences for Eli David.

It had been disappointing, to say the least.

Ziva had conspicuously been absent on that flight back, and Gibbs even more tight lipped than usual. At first, Tony had thought that Ziva was just going to spend some time with her father before returning to DC, but Gibbs had told both him and McGee that they were going to be a threesome for the foreseeable future when Tony had shown up bright and early in the office the next day.

So again, Tony hadn’t even had any time off to baby his arm. And Gibbs had gone on some kind of rampage, probably angry about the fact that he had now lost Ziva. Tony knew that Ziva had become like a daughter to him, and Ziva not being there was a blow to him. It was a blow to them all. Tony missed Ziva being there, of course. They had been partners for longer than Tony had been partners with Kate, or Danny, or anyone else except for Gibbs and McGee. Ever. So yes, of course he missed her. But he was also kind of relieved, because she had been so angry. She had beat him up further, threatened to shoot him, all of that even though he was already injured from the tangle with Michael Rivkin, he of Kidon fame. Nobody had believed that Tony had been lucky enough to survive that.

Ziva had thought he was jealous of her relationship with Michael. Of all the dumbest things. Sure, Tony flirted with her and loved their flirtatious banter. But Tony’s heart had always been Angela’s and Patrick’s. He’d given his heart to them a long time ago, and he wasn’t in any hurry to get it back. There was no room for anyone else in his life.

He’d only proposed to Wendy because they had been seeing each other long enough by then to make her twitchy for commitment, and Patrick and Angela had just had Charlotte. Angela hadn’t written to him in a while, and Tony had thought perhaps he had lost them for good now, and he didn’t want to lose everything. He knew he was living half a life at the time, and he couldn’t hold on to any part of it. He wasn’t living with Wendy, hadn’t bothered to unpack the boxes in Baltimore apartment, because even though he was mostly certain it wouldn’t happen, he was still ready to move to California to be with Patrick and Angela. But then Wendy had dumped his ass, right before the wedding, partly because of what had transpired with Danny to cause him to leave Baltimore. And he’d kind of lost everything then, so he took the job Gibbs had offered him.

But after he moved to DC, he’d received a letter from Angela again, apologizing for the long silence. Parenthood was more overwhelming than she had originally expected, but so much more rewarding as well. She included a number of letters she had written during the time, but never had a chance to surreptitiously mail to him. The letters contained Angela’s adventures at learning to be a mother, and how much she wished Tony was there with them, and through the letters she tried to share the experience with him. She encouraged Tony to settled in to his new job and she would keep working on Patrick, so Tony had bought the apartment in DC and settled in, content again to bide his time and wait for Patrick to be ready to accept him in their lives again. And then, after Angela’s death, Tony knew that he would never be able to commit to anyone but Patrick. Hence the string of one night stands and fuck all with commitments.

So no. Tony wasn’t someone to be jealous of Ziva because she had a boyfriend, for fuck’s sake. He had been happy for her, except for the one little fact that Rivkin was shady as fuck and a suspect in a terror plot. You couldn’t blame Tony for trying to save Ziva from this, because as far as he could tell, she _didn’t_ know what was going on. She was as much a victim in this situation with Rivkin. And he suspected that Eli David was pulling the strings from so far away, the way he had when he had set Ari on a course that would end with the death of Kate, as well as his own son Ari. Eli David was a manipulator, and Tony didn’t know what his end game was. He didn’t like that, and he didn’t like that Vance and Gibbs both seemed to be blind to this.

Which brought him to the reason why he was so exhausted that he must be hallucinating Jane being there in his apartment with him. Gibbs hadn’t eased their now three-man team back into action, especially with the Senior Field Agent winged with a broken arm. No. Gibbs hadn’t ordered them to work on cold cases, or data entry or whatever the hell busy work that agents did that was still crucial to the overall work of NCIS, but not an active case. Nope. Gibbs had taken the next body to drop and thrown the team right back into action, even though Tony had not even had a day to recuperate from the ridiculous trip to Israel, or his injuries.

And whatever it was that had crawled up Gibbs’ ass, seemed to have done the same to Ducky. Ducky wasn’t his usual solicitous self. He hadn’t prescribed painkillers for Tony, or checked in with him after what had happened. Tony had been on his own. So after his return from Israel, Tony had tried to avoid Ducky as much as he could, too. No sense offering himself up to be punished for whatever imagined transgressions while he was feeling so much pain already. He just went back to active duty with a broken arm, and with no complaints, even though McGee kept giving him worried looks. And Gibbs purposefully assigned him as many of the most rigorous tasks that he could. Which again, Tony took without complaint.

He didn’t know why Gibbs was punishing him, but it was his nature to just take it. He was used to being Gibbs’ punching bag. Had done it for eight years, already. So he didn’t really question it. Gibbs was PMSing or something.

But this time Gibbs was really making it hurt, though. For this case, they’d chased down a murderer, caught him, and were forced to finish all the paperwork before Gibbs would let them go, so Tony had gotten home pretty late that evening, just ready to collapse in his bed and sleep for the night. And he’d tried. But the pain in his arm was so great that he just couldn’t fall asleep.

And now Patrick was asking him questions about Red John. He was exhausted and at the end of his rope. “Red John didn’t do anything to me,” Tony decided to humor the hallucination. “Someone dislocated my shoulder and broke my arm on a case last week? Thereabouts. A little fuzzy right now.”

“Then why do you look so exhausted?” Jane’s voice was the same as it ever was, with that huskiness that always made Tony so hot under his collar.

“Gibbs just hasn’t given me a break since then,” Tony started giggling at that. Because get it? Break? Like his arm had been broken? “Had to go to Israel to defend my own fucking honor, and let the Mossad bitch beat me up again. And then we’ve just gone back in the field as if we weren’t one man down and of the three of us left, one of us only had one arm available for use.”

“Anthony,” Patrick chided him, and Tony closed his eyes and leaned into Patrick’s fingers in his hair.

“Are you sure it wasn’t anything to do with Red John?” Patrick asked him.

Tony shook his head. “I don’t know why I would have any connection with him.”

“OK. That’s good, Anthony,” Jane’s fingers were soothing in his hair, and on his face. “That’s really good.”

“I’m tired, Patrick,” Tony whined, not even caring that he was whining to a hallucination because he really was tired and he could do with Patrick right now.

“Let’s go to bed, sweetling,” Patrick told him, and Tony’s heart skipped a beat over that old endearment. It was what Patrick had always called him, because apparently, Anthony was the sweetest person Jane had ever met, the cynical asshole. “Let’s go to bed and you can sleep for as long as you need to.”

“I _tried_ ,” Tony’s eyes burned with tears. “My arm. It just hurts so much. I can’t get to sleep.”

Patrick pulled him into his arms, hugging him close, yet taking care not to jostle any bit of his arm any further. He draped a jacket over Tony’s shoulders, put shoes on his feet, and took Tony’s keys out of the bowl by the door. Before Tony knew quite what was happening, this hallucination was driving him to the nearest ER and had charmed his way to the front of the line. They re-x rayed his arm and found that he’d re-broken it and it was healing all wrong now. Or rather, Tony thought that it was probably Ziva who had re-broken his arm during their none too gentle little discussion after Eli had interrogated him. They cut the cast off, re-broke his arm, then reset and re-casted it, sending him home with a real doctor’s note and real painkillers this time, instead of Ducky’s assurances that Tony would be cared for.

Patrick had been there the entire time, and everyone interacted with him. So maybe he wasn’t a hallucination, after all. Everything was getting darker and fuzzier, so he suspected that maybe Patrick might have given him a painkiller, because his arm wasn’t hurting quite as badly anymore. He really didn’t quite know what was going on, but if Patrick was there, he wasn’t going to make a big fuss. Patrick had always taken care of him, and Tony slipped right back into that role, of Patrick being the alpha. Patrick had been the husband to both Tony and Angela. Even Angela had been more strong-willed than he had been, back then. Patrick and Angela had both taken him under their wing, and he had been the one they had lavished love and care on. He had been the spoiled, cosseted thing that both Angela and Patrick had loved and protected. So he went back to being that Anthony again, Patrick’s and Angela’s sweetling, because it was a role that was familiar to him, and a role that made him feel like he was finally home again.

Then he was back in his own bed, with Patrick holding him close, petting him, soothing him, speaking soft words to him that he couldn’t really hear, with the buzzing right under his skin from the painkillers. He was probably shooting his mouth off, but he really didn’t care, because Patrick was there. Patrick was really there. He still had to beg Patrick’s forgiveness for not being there to stop Red John from murdering Angela and Charlotte, that was totally on him, but he would probably have to do it in the morning before he went to work, because he wasn’t quite sure how to work his mouth properly and to say words in any coherent fashion. Because it was soooooooo nice and floaty right now. No pain. Thank fuck.

“Shhhhhhh,” he heard Patrick murmur. “You’re OK, sweetling. I’ve got you.”

“I’m so sorry, Patrick,” Tony was suddenly so sad now that he was weeping. “So, so sorry. My fault. Shoulda been there.”

“Shhh, sleep now, sweetling. We can talk when you’re more lucid.”

“I don’t want you to be angry at me anymore. You’ve been angry at me for so long.”

“I’m not angry at you, Anthony, I just want to keep you safe.”

“Shoulda been there.”

“No, sweetling. You’re safe. I’ve got you. Sleep now.”

“But…” Tony felt he should protest.

“Do you still trust me?” Patrick asked him.

“’Course,” Tony nodded his head.

“Then trust me, and go to sleep. I’m not angry at you. I haven’t been for a long time now.”

“Why haven’t you answered my calls?” Tony’s heart broke at the thought that Patrick hadn’t picked up the phone and spoken to him, even though he’d called so faithfully over the course of the year.

“Because I need you to be safe. No one is safe with me, my love,” Jane muttered.

“Do you still love me?” Tony was incredibly fuzzy now, but he needed to ask that question.

“I never stopped loving you,” Patrick told him. “Never.”

“’Kay,” Tony sighed, his eyelids getting heavier.

“Sleep, sweetling,” he thought he felt Patrick’s lips brush his temple. But he couldn’t really tell. He was slipping into the darkness. His last thought was how much he wanted to tell Patrick that he loved him, and had always loved him, but he couldn’t get the words out so he gave in to the warm darkness.

Tony’s phone was buzzing on his nightstand and Tony swam up into consciousness and using his good arm, reached across the warm body holding him, and answered it. “DiNozzo,” he rasped, his mouth dry.

“Where the hell are you?” Gibbs yelled at him.

Tony’s brain was still so fuzzy. “Huh?” was all he could get out.

“You’re _late_ ,” Gibbs growled.

The warm body holding him moved and plucked the phone out of his fingers. “Who is this?” a very familiar voice asked. Right. Patrick had come for him. Patrick had come for him!

“Who is _this_?” Tony could hear Gibbs, he was so loud. Tony tried to scrabble to get his phone back but Patrick put it on speaker and held it away from him, and Tony only had one good arm to work with so it was out of his reach unless he wanted to put some painful moves on Patrick. Tony definitely did not want to hurt Patrick, so he gave up after a futile struggle.

“I’m Patrick,” Patrick introduced himself, without actually introducing himself, his tone casual and friendly.

“Gibbs, I’ll be right there,” Tony tried to clamber out from under the covers.

“Stay,” one word from Patrick, and Tony collapsed back against him, grunting in pain when he accidentally bumped his arm. “Gibbs, is it? Mr. Gibbs…”

“Special Agent Gibbs,” Gibbs interrupted, making Jane roll his eyes and make a face. Tony had to bury his face in Jane’s chest to stifle an inappropriate giggle.

“Yes, well, _Special Agent_ Gibbs, I found Anthony in his apartment in so much pain that I had to take him to the nearest ER. He mentioned breaking his arm on a case last week, but as it turns out, while he was on his trip out of the country a day or so later, also for work I’m told, his arm was somehow _re_ -broken,” Patrick said mildly, although the emphasis on Gibbs’ title was definitely mocking.

“What?” Gibbs sounded suspicious. “Is that true?”

“I will send over Anthony’s doctor’s notes, and for some odd reason, he insisted on getting a copy of his x-ray so he could give it to his personal physician, one Doctor Mallard?” Jane continued, in that mild yet obviously disapproving tone of voice. “Why his personal physician hadn’t followed up with him after he incurred his original injury, I’m not sure. Nor am I happy that Anthony was not given anything to help manage the pain of a broken arm after it first happened, never mind managing the pain of a broken arm that has been broken again and not set, healing terribly, for days.”

“What?” Gibbs sounded concerned now. “Who are you again?”

“I’m _Patrick_ ,” Jane repeated, allowing exasperation to color his tone. “It’s time for Anthony to take more pain medication, and last night, the doctor gave him a note to excuse him from work for the rest of this week.

“I’m fine,” Tony piped up. “I’ll be in tomorrow.”

Tony couldn’t help but cringe when Jane gave him a look and shook a finger at him.

“Uh… maybe?” he added hesitantly.

“Did you really re-break your arm, DiNozzo?” Gibbs asked.

“Well, technically, _I_ didn’t,” Tony grimaced. “But maybe Ziva did?” he said it quickly.

“ _What_?”

“We had a… discussion after… the, uh, thing? With Eli.”

“Doesn’t sound like a particularly civil discussion,” Patrick chimed in.

“And she took it out on you afterwards?”

“You could say that,” Tony tried to sit up but again accidentally moved his arm wrong, and gritted out an epithet.

“Anthony will be back on Monday,” Patrick continued.

“ _Tomorrow_ ,” Tony insisted.

“And if you’re lucky, he won’t bring an attorney in to speak about his deplorable working conditions,” Patrick gave Tony a cheeky grin as he said it.

Tony groaned and smacked his good hand to his face.

“DiNozzo, you…”

“Goodbye, Special Agent Gibbs,” Patrick sang out, before he cut the call mid Gibbs’ sentence.

“Oh man,” Tony groaned. “Gibbs is _so_ going to take this out of my ass,” he sighed, tiredly. “But right now I don’t really care.”

“No he won’t,” Patrick told him, still smiling. “I won’t let him.”

Tony couldn’t help but smile back and shake his head. Jane always did that. And somehow, for whatever reason, Tony believed him. He knew that Patrick would do something sneaky behind his back, and somehow Gibbs would not extract his pound of flesh, and even if he did, then Patrick would make him regret it. That was how it always worked with him.

“Here,” Patrick handed him more pain pills and a glass of water, already waiting for them on the side table.

Tony took the meds without protest, although he put on his best pout, and allowed Patrick to pull him back into his arms, cuddle the shit out of him, and pet him back to sleep. It felt good to let everything go, and relax, and let the pain float away.


	3. Patrick

**Chapter Three: Patrick**

[](https://i.imgur.com/77VYHjy.png)

Patrick opened his eyes, tensing up when he realized he was in an unfamiliar bed, but then he saw that he had an armful of a sleeping Anthony snuggled into his side, his broken arm carefully cradled between them and he relaxed and broke into a smile. He was with Anthony in Anthony’s apartment in DC. He ran his fingers through Anthony’s hair and his heart almost broke when the man sighed and smiled, burrowing even closer into Patrick. He remembered those long ago days when he had an armful of Anthony on one side, and Angela on the other, the three of them so happy and content. So certain of their future together. So sure that they all belonged together, even back then, when nobody could even name what they were to each other. When nobody understood how they could all three be together and have it feel so right. It felt good to be here and to have Anthony back in his arms, even if it did make him miss Angela all the more.

He gazed down at the sleeping man, taking in the new lines on his face, age and exhaustion. The circles under his eyes seemed to be getting better. Those full, pouty lips of his were slack and he was drooling onto Patrick’s chest, which made him want to laugh out loud. He kissed Anthony’s hair and sighed, long and slow.

That gaping hole in his chest seemed to be filling up again. He felt as if a blanket of peace and serenity had been thrown over him, just because he had his old lover back in his arms. But that was it, wasn’t it? Anthony wasn’t just an ‘old lover’. Anthony brought with him all those good memories of Angela, when the three of them had had orgies of teenage sex, the love and the hope that he’d harbored for the future with both Angela and Anthony. There were also those memories of Angela trying to calm his fury after he learned that Anthony wanted to choose his own path instead of sticking with their plan.

No. Tony was definitely not just an old lover. Tony had been just as important to Patrick as Angela had been once upon a time. Was still as important to Patrick as Angela had been, even though Patrick had tried to deny this for years. Seeing Anthony again should have been far more bittersweet than this, Patrick thought. But he had lost so much since then, and Anthony had as well. Finally being reunited, after these many long years, it felt like a coming home and a reconciliation that was long past due, more than anything else.

He hadn’t felt so content to just be, not since Angela and Charlotte had been murdered. Truth be told, he probably hadn’t felt this contentment since Anthony had left them. He hadn’t felt complete since he refused to allow Anthony to return. For the first time, Patrick admitted to himself that he had been waiting to bring Anthony home, too. Angela had been right the entire time. Patrick wanted Anthony back with them, no matter how hard he had tried to hold on to his anger. He’d been trying to punish Anthony by holding himself back, keeping himself, Angela and Charlotte away from Anthony, but in time there was no doubt that he was going to capitulate and welcome Anthony home with open arms. Unfortunately, Red John had come in the way of their eventual domestic bliss. But now, he had Anthony in his life again. For good this time. Now that he had Anthony back, there was no way he was letting him go again.

Patrick’s heart beat loudly in his chest, anxiety rising in his body. He’d led Red John right to Anthony now. He had been the one to take Anthony to the hospital. He’d spent the night here in the apartment with Anthony. He had no doubt that Red John would have taken note of this, coming so soon after the Hardy’s death. If he hadn’t already thought that Anthony was someone important to Patrick before, he certainly did now.

Patrick laid there, tightening his hold on Anthony, breathing in and out until his heart rate settled back down. No use crying over spilt milk. He and Anthony would just have to deal with this now, together. And this time, Patrick was not going to underestimate Red John, his need for vengeance, or his long reach. No. Patrick was never going to come home to a red smiley face on the wall, painted in Anthony’s blood. _Never_.

That urge to kill Red John flooded back into him for a moment. Although now, it wasn’t a burning need that was the end all and be all, the culmination of his existence, the signal to the end of his life here on earth. It was now merely the only way to keep the people he cared about safe. Anthony, of course. But now he was attached to Lisbon, Van Pelt, Cho and Rigsby as well. It wasn’t so much vengeance anymore, but a need to take action in a proactive way to ensure that his loved ones were protected. It was a different feeling, now that he realized that he _did_ have more to lose. He’d thought he’d already lost everything, but he was wrong. There was Anthony, and his team at CBI had become near and dear to his heart as well. There was no way that Red John would have missed that.

He would have to think through these new feelings and try to understand how everything now fit together. He had joined CBI with one single purpose: to hunt and kill Red John. To slake his thirst for revenge by taking Red John’s life. That had been his one single purpose, and he hadn’t cared how long it took, nor what he had to sacrifice to get it. That was what he’d craved. It was the only thing he lived for. But now… things were different now. For one thing, he wanted to get to know this new Anthony, who was still his sweetling, but who had had so many years of becoming and being himself. This new person that he had become, Patrick did not know. And he wanted to. He wanted to learn who his sweet Anthony had grown up to be, and to show Anthony who he was now. That he, too, had grown up. He wasn’t that self-centered asshole he’d been when he was a fake psychic anymore. Well, to be fair, he was still an asshole, but he was a different type of asshole now.

He wished Anthony were awake so he could tell him all of this, but he realized that it had only been a couple of hours since he’d fed Anthony that last painkiller, after the phone call with his boss. Chances were, Anthony would sleep for several more hours. It was time for Patrick to get up and use the facilities, and he would take the time to poke around to see how Anthony lived now. What things he had in his home. And what that might reveal about him.

Regretfully, he slithered out from under Anthony, smiling when the man grumbled in his sleep, trying to hold on to Patrick. He slid his pillow into Anthony’s arms and Anthony buried his face in the pillow and sighed. He stood for a long moment, just smiling down at the beautiful man. How had he stayed away for so long? How had he resisted Angela’s entreaties to forgive Anthony and allow him to come back? He didn’t know, but he was just thankful that Anthony was breathing and alive now.

Patrick used the facilities, deciding to shower, and he took note of Anthony’s expensive bath and hair products. Anthony had somehow turned out to be high maintenance, he thought. From that sweet teenager who didn’t care if he slept in a smelly sleeping bag under the stars to this man who seemed to care perhaps too much about his grooming. What had happened to him?

After his shower, with a towel wrapped around his waist, Patrick poked around in Anthony’s medicine cabinets, the cabinets below the sink, sharp eyes taking in everything. He went through Anthony’s closet methodically, looking at everything, smiling when he held a pair of pants up against himself. Anthony had apparently had some kind of growth spurt in college because he was several inches taller than Patrick was. He pulled on pajama pants and a white t-shirt, smiling when the pants legs trailed on the floor. He turned to gaze at the man, still sleeping on the bed, going over there and dropping a soft kiss on his temple and pulling the covers up securely. It should have been odd that Anthony had a twin bed in his huge bedroom, but Patrick thought he understood the reason why Anthony did this. It signaled to him that Anthony did not bring home any of his dalliances – and Patrick knew that a man who looked the way Anthony did most certainly did not want for choice. The small bed signaled that Anthony was not looking for a relationship.

Why should he, when he was already in one with Angela and him? Patrick couldn’t help but feel a smug satisfaction at that knowledge. Anthony was still his, and together they could keep the memory of Angela alive. Patrick couldn’t wait to tell him all about Charlotte and what a wonderful little girl she had been. Oh, she had been sweet and kind, this was true. But she was Patrick’s daughter, after all, so she had also been a little shit and even as young as she had been, she knew how to manipulate everyone in her orbit, including Patrick, to get her way. And that was what had made her so interesting. She had been an apple that had definitely not fallen too far from the tree, even though Angela and he had tried very hard to insulate her from the nastiness and meanness of the world.

Patrick left the bedroom and went through the rest of the apartment, looking at everything, taking it all in and remembering it all. Anthony’s refrigerator was almost bare, but his pantry was filled with the kind of goods that made Patrick think that the man could and did cook, when he had the time. But if working for NCIS was anything like working for the CBI, then Patrick understood why he had not much by way of fresh produce. There were eggs though, and an opened packet of bacon that didn’t seem to be growing anything. They could probably whip up some kind of breakfast out of these items. But groceries would be appreciated. In the back of a cabinet, Patrick even found a box of his favorite tea, which made him smile. He set the kettle on the stove, made tea, and continued to snoop through Anthony’s things.

Patrick also found Anthony’s gun safe, and guessed his combination, opening the safe after three tries. Interestingly, the code was not Angela’s birthday or Patrick’s, but rather it was Charlotte’s, which made him wonder how much Angela and Anthony must have been speaking without his knowledge. Angela was just about the only person who had ever been able to hide anything from him. He felt a stab of regret go through him, for having been the one to stand in between Angela and Anthony, when he had stubbornly held on to his anger instead of striving to understand Anthony the way Angela had.

Patrick noted the guns, ammunition, and several vicious looking knives that were in the safe. He tested the edge of one of them and flinched, immediately sucking his bleeding thumb as he slid the knife back into its sheathe. Anthony had somehow become some kind of warrior as part of his process of growing up and learning to stand on his own two feet. Patrick had also found several knives secreted away in the apartment, in strategic places where Anthony would be able to reach them during some kind of emergency. This both comforted him, and worried him, though. It comforted him that Anthony was not just able to take care of himself, and he seemed to be preparing for the worst, which meant that if Red John did come after him, he would not be an easy target. He would fight to his very last breath. But it worried him that Anthony was living in a reality, in a world where he did not feel as if he could be safe in his own apartment. That he needed to hide weapons around the apartment, in case he was under siege from unknown enemies, right here in his own home. And he wasn’t even expecting Red John to come after him. So why was he on high alert?

Patrick frowned and blew out a breath. That was something they would need to discuss. They would need to talk about a lot of things. Patrick wouldn’t expect Anthony to drop everything and come back with him to California, leave this life he had built. But he couldn’t, in all good conscience, leave Anthony here to work a dangerous job where they didn’t seem to value him or care that he was being worked so hard even when he was injured. He’d also picked up, from Anthony’s drugged rambles from the previous night, that he’d been injured in a struggle with some kind of terrorist, and that afterwards, Gibbs and some guy named Vance had made him go to Israel to face Mossad and be interrogated by the head of Mossad. And Mossad was involved in terror plots in this country. That that was where he had his arm re-broken did not escape Patrick.

What kind of life was this for Anthony, where he did not even feel secure in his own home? Patrick could not just leave him here without settling this because he had just compounded Anthony’s issues by painting a target right over him. Patrick was certain that Red John knew Anthony existed now, and that Anthony was someone important to Patrick. That would be enough for him to come for him next. Patrick was _not_ going to let that happen without his involvement. He was not going to abandon Anthony yet again, and that was the end of that.

He browsed through Anthony’s extensive movie collection, and the books on his bookshelves, and picked out a book before he settled back in the bed with it, allowing Anthony to curl into him with a quiet sigh. A couple of hours later, he was well into the book when his phone started ringing and Anthony jerked in his arms, the phone waking him from a deep sleep. Patrick ignored the call – it was only Lisbon – and tried to pet Anthony back to sleep. But then his phone rang again.

“You should get that,” Anthony blinked his eyes open and yawned, still sounding sleepy. “Might be important.”

Patrick sighed and answered. “Hello, Lisbon,” he kept his voice soft, putting the book down and burying his fingers in Anthony’s soft hair, hoping to lull him back to sleep.

“Where the hell _are_ you, Jane?” Lisbon yelled. She was loud enough that Patrick saw Anthony’s ears perk up. He was paying attention now. “I’ve been calling and calling. And so has the rest of the team. And you haven’t picked up in two weeks.”

“It hasn’t been a whole two weeks, has it, Lisbon?” Patrick had to smile. “Are you saying that you miss me?” he asked playfully.

“As if,” Lisbon snorted.

“It’s OK. I know that Agent Cho would surely have missed me,” Patrick’s smile widened at the thought of the taciturn Asian man admitting any such thing.

“Cho thought you were kidnapped by Red John,” Lisbon snapped.

Patrick sighed. “I’m sorry, Lisbon, I should have called you back,” he apologized.

“Damn right, you should have,” Lisbon grumbled. “Are you OK?”

“I’m doing well,” Patrick sighed, still feeling that blanket of serenity, in bed with Anthony, whose arm was now around him and he was trying to scooch as close to him as he possibly could.

“Why’d you book out of town like that?”

“I needed to do something,” Patrick told her.

“ _That’s_ not cryptic at all,” Lisbon scoffed, snorting almost at the same time as Anthony did. “Jane, are you _with_ someone?” she asked, and Patrick could practically see her hackles rising.

“I told you I had to do something,” Patrick said reasonably.

“I didn’t take it to mean you had to do some _one_ ,” Lisbon hissed at him.

Anthony was huffing a short bark of laughter into his shoulder now.

“Lisbon, no one is doing anything to anyone,” Patrick knew he sounded amused now, but he couldn’t help it.

“Yet,” Anthony piped up.

“Seriously, who _is_ that with you?” Lisbon demanded.

Patrick sighed and put his phone on speaker. “Lisbon, this is Anthony. Anthony, this is Agent Teresa Lisbon of the CBI.”

“Agent Lisbon,” Anthony greeted her politely, although he was still smiling.

“Who the hell are you, Anthony?”

Anthony gave him a wide eyed look. “No one?” he tried.

Patrick rolled his eyes. “He’s someone,” he contradicted him.

Patrick could see Lisbon’s brow crease. “Huh,” she murmured. She was a clever one, and Van Pelt was probably tracking his phone right now. They would probably identify Anthony in a few minutes.

“I’ll be back soon, Lisbon. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later. Byeee,” he sang sunnily before he hung up.

“You’re good at hanging up on people,” Anthony yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Reminds me of someone else I know.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he sighed, hot breath blowing on Patrick’s neck. “Time is it?”

“Mid-afternoon, sometime. You’re probably starving.”

Anthony’s belly rumbled loudly, making Patrick laugh.

“Same old Anthony,” he nuzzled into Anthony’s hair. “Let me wrap up your arm and you can shower. I’ll make food and we can eat afterwards.”

Anthony nodded, and allowed Patrick to wrap his cast securely in plastic before starting the shower. Patrick went into the kitchen and got the bacon started. By the time Anthony padded out, he was barefooted, clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders, emphasizing his muscled torso. Patrick stared at him, knowing that his pupils were dilating and his pulse rising at the sight of Anthony, all grown up, so goddamned sexy now.

Anthony gave him a small smile, an attractive flush rising in his face, as he stood in the doorway, looking embarrassed and shy, his good hand going to the back of his neck, scratching it idly. “Hi,” he husked.

“Hi,” Patrick smiled at him. “How’s your arm?”

“Not bad,” Anthony shrugged. “Shoulder feels pretty good, too.”

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still have it in a sling,” Patrick chided him.

“I’ll put the sling back on if it starts hurting,” Anthony promised.

“Not much fresh stuff in your fridge, so I made pancakes,” Patrick pulled the platter of pancakes and bacon that he’d kept warming in the oven. “Are you still an eggs over easy man?”

Anthony blushed and nodded shyly, looking surprised that Patrick remembered that detail about him.

Patrick made Anthony eggs just the way he used to like them, and then scrambled a couple of eggs for himself. They sat next to each other at the counter on Anthony’s expensive barstools, shoulder to shoulder, silent as they ate. Patrick could tell that Anthony wanted to say something, so he kept his expression open. He didn’t want to rush the man, and he didn’t want to seem as if he wouldn’t be receptive, so he kept eating and smiling at him. Anthony was eating in that way that seemed as if he was using the food as a distraction, chewing aggressively, almost angrily, until finally, he pushed his plate away.

“I should have been there with Angela and Charlotte,” the man blurted out. “I should have been there for you. I should have defended them against Red John. Protected them. Or it should have been me that died, so they could escape.”

Patrick sighed, his heart heavy with sorrow at the loss that they had both suffered. “The blame lies with me,” he put a hand on Anthony’s neck. “Squarely with me, Anthony. I taunted him. I brought this down on our heads.”

“No,” Anthony’s denial was fierce. “It’s _not_ your fault. You didn’t kill them. It was Red John.”

Patrick kneaded the back of Anthony’s neck, feeling a little better that Anthony did not blame him for the deaths of Angela and Charlotte. But he knew in his heart that it was his fault. It wasn’t Anthony’s, it was his, because he had spoken so callously about such a dangerous individual. So great was his hubris and arrogance that he did not think that Red John would retaliate, with swiftness and deadly accuracy. “If it isn’t my fault,” he finally said, “and it is Red John’s, then why would you need to apologize to me?”

“Because I _left_ ,” Anthony’s face was twisted with pain and grief. “I left you, instead of staying with you, as we had planned. I should’ve stayed.”

“No, sweetling,” Patrick shook his head. “No. You needed things Angela and I couldn’t give you at the time, and she was right. You needed to go, so that you could be what you wanted to be, learn who you were, and then when you did come back to us, it would have been of your own volition and when you were ready and fully formed. I was wrong to have kept you away. Stopped you from coming back to us.”

“It was my fault,” Anthony insisted.

“No,” Patrick blew out a breath. “If you hadn’t left us, you wouldn’t have gone to college, become a cop, and a federal agent who knows how to fight and defend himself and protect others. If you had stayed with us, you would have been that sweet, gentle soul, who couldn’t hurt a fly, and you would’ve died at Red John’s hand as well. And I would have lost all three of you, all at once.”

“I could have done _something_. I could’ve made a difference.”

“I know you feel that way.”

“I do. I thought, maybe that was why you didn’t want to talk to me after Angela…”

“No,” Patrick made sure that Anthony was looking at him. “No, Anthony. I stayed away because I was feeling guilty. I’d called Red John’s attention on myself, and Angela and Charlotte paid the price for that. And also… because, well, I didn’t want Red John to know you existed. To keep you safe. So I had to pretend like I didn’t know you.”

Anthony’s gaze was piercing, and he finally nodded.

“But now, my being here, I’ve made you a target,” Patrick bit his lip. “I’m sorry for that.”

“Why did you come?” The question was asked casually, but Patrick could see that his answer would mean everything to Anthony.

“I saw your name on a flight manifest, flying in to Sacramento, about a week after the funerals.”

“I tried to look for you, but I couldn’t find you. No one would tell me anything about where you’d gone.”

“I was at an institution,” Patrick told him somberly. “I couldn’t keep it together. I was consumed by it all. I was lost, and I needed help.”

“Patrick…” Anthony breathed out and clutched at his hand.

“But when I saw that you’d come, I presumed that you must have looked for me.”

“I did look for you.”

“Maybe looked into the murders?”

Anthony nodded, “Of course. I _am_ an investigator.”

“Something happened, a few weeks ago,” Patrick gave him a serious look, and then he outlined the case that began with the murder of Emma Plaskett, the trademark Red John smiley face in the sky, the missing twin, Hardy, everything.

“I shot Hardy,” Patrick finished. “I took something from him, so now I’m waiting for him to take something from me. I hadn’t had a phone call from you in too long. So I had to come. I didn’t know if you were alright.”

“I was, uh, a little busy. Sorry,” Anthony gave him a guilty look.

“I know, sweetling. I’m just glad you’re OK,” Patrick caressed Anthony’s face.

Anthony sat, looking thoughtful. He began nodding slowly. “You’re right, I’m on his radar now.”

Patrick rubbed his face. “I’m sorry for that, Anthony…”

“Don’t be,” Anthony gave him a feral smile. “Let him underestimate you, and underestimate me. Let him come for me. I’ll be ready.”

“He won’t come in person. He’ll send someone. A proxy. Who probably won’t lead us back to him, even if we capture them alive.”

“Maybe we can make me an even more attractive target, and lure him here in person?”

“ _No_ ,” Patrick told him sharply. “I won’t risk you.”

Anthony just gave him a look but said nothing more, pulling his plate back and continuing to eat wordlessly.

Patrick sat and observed Anthony for a long moment. This was not the innocent young boy that he and Angela had fallen in love with. This was a man who had lived a life, and not an easy one from the looks of it. He looked weary, and not just in a physical way. He was no longer filled with light and hope and optimism. There was a sadness and a darkness about him. But it was difficult, even for Patrick, to read him fully. Anthony had learned to conceal himself from the world, apparently, and Patrick didn’t like it. Didn’t like that Anthony was no longer an open book to him, the way he used to be. That Anthony felt the need to hide himself, even from Patrick, and he was very good at it.

But that was on him, for his rejection of the man for all of these years. Now Patrick had to figure out a way to engineer this man out of harm’s way. He couldn’t just leave Anthony here, given that he’d painted a target right smack on Anthony’s forehead now. And besides, even without the threat of Red John, Anthony was living the kind of life where he felt the need to have little weapon caches, right in his own apartment. As if he were expecting enemies to attack him in his own home. Patrick still didn’t know what to think about that.

“Lisbon sounds nice,” Anthony remarked.

Patrick grunted. She was nice enough.

“I’m guessing she’ll probably be here shortly?”

“By tonight, or tomorrow at the latest,” Patrick agreed.

Anthony flashed him a smile. “They care about you.”

“And I them.”

“I can tell.”

“They’re at risk, too,” Patrick said softly. “But you, now, most of all.”

There was silence while Anthony emptied his coffee cup. Patrick refilled his coffee and put the kettle on for another cup of tea.

“We should do something while you’re here,” Anthony’s words surprised him.

Patrick raised an eyebrow. “What do you suggest?”

“The county fair is in town this week,” Anthony shrugged. “I keep an eye out on them, for old time’s sake. Nobody we know involved in this one. I checked.”

“We can’t. It’s too public. Red John will see us.”

“So what? You already said I’m a target now. Might as well have a bit of fun while you’re in town.”

Patrick gave him a shrewd look. Anthony was expecting him to leave him there, and go back to California by himself. What the hell had happened to the man in the intervening years that he didn’t seem to expect anything from anyone? It was as if Anthony had gone on to live his life as if he was alone again, which Patrick had thought he and Angela had broken their lover of that habit. Apparently Anthony was just as bad at making personal connections as Patrick was if his expectations were so low.

“The county fair, though?” Patrick grimaced.

“Uh-huh.”

“And you want to go? Why?”

“We could take them! Win the biggest and ugliest stuffed unicorn ever,” Anthony grinned at him, and for a second there, Patrick saw that mischievous look that used to surprise him during the incredibly rare times that Anthony was up to no good back when they were young.

“I can buy you the fucking biggest and ugliest unicorn ever.”

“Not the same,” Anthony pouted. His pout was still fucking adorable.

“What other reasons could we have for going to the fair?”

“Nostalgia? Do the things Angela hated the most?”

“OK,” Patrick smiled. “We could do that. Tomorrow night?”

“Tonight.”

“You’re hurt. You have a broken arm.”

“Not the worst thing I’ve experienced.” Patrick looked at him and his laissez-faire attitude to injuries in horror as Anthony grinned at him. “At least nobody actually shot me or stabbed me this time,” he made a ‘what can you do’ gesture with his arms.

“ _Tomorrow_ ,” Patrick tried to insist. “You should be resting.”

“I work tomorrow. God knows what time I’ll get off work, since Gibbs is on some kind of tear that makes him even more of a bastard than normal,” he made a face.

“You have the rest of the week off.”

Anthony just snorted at that. “Besides, Lisbon will be here soon, and I don’t want to do this with other people around. I just want to have you all to myself for one night. Is that too much to ask?” those green eyes were as persuasive as ever, and Patrick found himself nodding.

“All right,” he sighed.

“It’s a date,” the words felt like a promise, and Anthony’s accompanying smile was bright.


	4. Tony

**Chapter Four: Tony**

[](https://i.imgur.com/aMm8cTY.png)

It was strange having Patrick in his apartment. It wasn’t like Patrick took up a lot of space, or was loud or anything like that. But Patrick was just right _there_. His personality so big that his presence felt so much more than just the physicality of having another body in his home. It was unsettling because Tony couldn’t decide if Patrick’s presence was comforting or the opposite. It probably didn’t help that his blue eyes never seemed to stop looking at him. Every time Tony looked at him, Patrick was unashamedly staring at him, and he would smile at him, that shy little smile that made him look like a little boy, and Tony would always smile back. Even when Tony put on a movie, and tried to lose himself in the world of make believe, Patrick’s eyes were mostly on him instead of on his wide screen TV.

Tony wasn’t used to this kind of scrutiny from anyone. He’d tried to be as invisible as possible as a child, not wanting to attract Senior’s attention. And after his mother had died, he’d been shipped off to boarding school where he was pretty runty and an easy target for the school bullies, so he’d tried to fade into the background there as well, at least until that first summer with Patrick and Angela. And at NCIS? He was practically invisible at NCIS. He never had to reveal too much of himself there, especially after they had added to their original two-man team. At work, he was used to being able to deflect attention away from him, or at least deflect attention away from whatever it was he didn’t want to talk about by acting a certain way and implying certain things. With Ziva and McGee, and poor slain Kate, acting like an asshole or an idiotic frat boy always made them discount him and look away. With Gibbs, well, Gibbs was going to look if he wanted to and see Tony for who he was if he wanted to. He used to want to, but these days Gibbs never really looked at Tony anymore. Not the kind of looking that meant that Gibbs actually _saw_ him. It was as if Gibbs had completely forgotten who Tony really was, and what his role was to be on their team.

A stab of pain went through Tony’s heart. Gibbs had lost sight of him. Tony was supposed to help balance the team out, allowing Gibbs to play to his strengths while Tony picked up the slack and did whatever else needed to be done in order to keep the team running and try to make it so the MCRT wasn’t a revolving door of TADs that got run off by Gibbs’ wonderful attitude and unmerciful work ethic. That was how they had always done it. But these days, it seemed as if Gibbs was buying into the clown mask that allowed Tony to hide himself away from everything and everyone else.

But whatever. Now Patrick was here, and he was _definitely_ looking at Tony and seeing him. He felt stripped down to his core. As if Patrick could see every single thing he’d done, every sin, every lie, every bad act, and worse, every single hurt that he had undergone since they had last been together. Tony didn’t like showing weakness in front of anyone, and even though he wanted to hide it from Patrick, those incredible eyes of his seemed to just see it all. Tony didn’t really know what Patrick thought about him, though. Because even though they were sitting on the couch and Patrick had his arm around Tony, one hand rubbing up and down Tony’s good arm in an absent manner, Patrick was still as inscrutable as ever. The only times Tony had seen Patrick out of control was sometimes, when they were all three having sex – he, Angela and Patrick – and they were all approaching orgasm. And of course, the memorable time when Tony told him and Angela that he needed to go to college first, to find himself, before he could fully commit to the both of them. Because RMA had made that much of a difference into how he thought about himself, he needed to follow that through and see where that went, or he would forever regret closing a door and not exploring that road before committing to Patrick and Angela. Patrick had been so, so angry then.

But now, here he was, in Tony’s apartment, concerned for his safety, and upset because of Red John. Tony wondered, too, if Patrick was upset about having taken a life, even the life of a serial killer. It was never easy to have to resort to violence of any sort, and although technically Tony was a scrappy brawler and pretty competent when it counted, violence of any sort especially the lethal sort of violence was traumatic. To be honest, Tony still wasn’t sure if he was fully recovered from the whole thing in Ziva’s apartment with Michael. How it had escalated so quickly from him trying to arrest a suspected terrorist, to the vicious hand to hand combat, Michael breaking Tony’s arm and dislocating his shoulder, the whole glass table shard through Michael’s side, and that Michael just kept on coming for him. He’d managed to get to his gun and stopped the man, and maybe he would forever secretly wonder if perhaps he could have shot Michael in the leg to just wing him, the way Ziva had suggested when she’d beaten him up again after Eli David’s interrogation of him. But he’d truly known, in his core, that Michael was not going to give up until one of them was dead and he did not want to be the one who died. So, he’d shot the man.

It had hurt him in so many ways, and Michael wasn’t even the first person Tony had had to kill. Not even close. So he had to worry about how Patrick might be feeling about having killed for the first time, and not just anyone, but it was someone in law enforcement, and someone who had a direct link to Red John. Tony knew that it had to be eating away at him, but he didn’t know how to bring it up, or even if Patrick would want to talk about it. Not with him, at least.

Sure, _now_ Patrick said that he didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, but Tony had been the one to walk away from them. If Tony had been at home with Angela and Charlotte, the outcome would have been different. He _knew_ that. Even if Patrick had made it sound logical that he wouldn’t have been the tough son of a bitch that he was now, because he wouldn’t have gone on to play football, to go to the police academy, to get all that training as both a cop and now a federal agent. Yes, it sounded logical and reasonable that he would have been that useless little kid who couldn’t say boo to a goose that he had been all those years ago and probably not much help as the first line of defense against someone of Red John’s experience and caliber. But still. He had been raised by Senior. He knew how to take hits and still keep functioning. At least he would have been there, and would have tried to do _something_ , instead of being on the other side of the country completely unaware that Angela and little Charlotte were even in any kind of danger. And it wasn’t like anyone had called him about them. He had had to find out the hard way, by catching it on the news. While it had been big news in California, Angela and Charlotte’s murders hadn’t really been huge in the national news. They had been trying to downplay the whole Red John angle at the time, while they worked on solving the cases. Which of course, all these years later, still remained unsolved even though Patrick was on the case now.

But no. Tony hadn’t been informed of their deaths. It wasn’t as if he was Angela’s or Charlotte’s or even Patrick’s emergency contact. He’d forfeited that right by wanting to be someone who knew himself and was secure in who he was, and by leaving them to attain a higher education. But he’d found out about their deaths and then dug into it further, to try to figure out what had happened. By the time he was able to get time off and fly out to California, he’d already missed their funerals. He had been almost crippled with grief, especially since he couldn’t find Patrick. And now here Patrick was, and he wasn’t even angry at him anymore, just desperate to keep him safe. Even though Patrick wasn’t trying to manipulate him – yet – he could tell that Patrick really was worried about his safety. Tony didn’t know what he would have to do to convince Patrick that he would be fine, but he knew he’d be able to do it. Patrick would go back to California with his team and keep working on catching Red John, and Tony would keep doing his job here and bide his time, awaiting Red John. Patrick was right. Red John would come for him, eventually. He wouldn’t do it right away. He’d keep Patrick worried and anticipating his next move. That’s what _he_ would do, if he were in Red John’s shoes. But that also meant that Tony would have time to prepare for it. He was not going to mess around with the preparation. He would be ready for him and whatever army he chose to bring.

Tony started thinking about ways to fortify his apartment and decided that he would need to hide different weapons – not just knives – around his apartment. He wasn’t just waiting for someone from the Philly mob to come get him, or a Baltimore PD cop, or some marine out on parole anymore. He would have to prepare for the most dangerous serial killer in recent history.

After Angela’s and Charlotte’s deaths, he’d researched Red John. Thoroughly. And he kept himself up to date with what was going on with the investigations. Sure, he’d missed this whole thing with Hardy, but he’d been a little busy getting his own ass kicked on two different continents. But he’d have caught up with it in a few days, after Gibbs cooled down and stopped trying to kill him by overworking him. Tony was definitely not going to underestimate Red John or his followers, so he was going to have to prepare some new little surprises to help him do what needed to be done.

“Where’d you go?” Patrick’s voice brought him back.

“Huh?” Tony startled, realizing then that the movie was not just over, the end credits were over. The DVD’s start menu was playing over and over in an endless loop, and Patrick’s eyes were concerned as he gazed at Tony. “Oh, sorry,” Tony felt his face heat up in a blush. “Just daydreaming.”

“You were scheming,” Patrick raised an eyebrow at him.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Stop reading my mind.”

“There’s no such thing as psychics,” Patrick told him.

Tony snorted. “I know,” he scoffed. “But still. Stop reading my mind.” A yawn took him by surprise and he snuggled into Patrick’s body. Who knew how long he would have him with him, but Tony was not going to waste a minute of it. He nuzzled into Patrick’s chest.

“Nap time,” Patrick helped ease him down so he was lying with his head in Patrick’s lap. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“So have you,” Tony murmured, feeling drowsy.

“Shh,” Patrick’s fingers were in Tony’s hair, slowly drawing them through, fingernails gently scratching his scalp, soothing him.

“Did you drug me?” Tony tried to glare at him.

“Only a little,” Patrick smiled.

“I _knew_ that hot chocolate tasted funny,” Tony grumbled, but he was too relaxed and his eyelids were heavy.

“Sleep. So we can go to the fair this evening. Like you wanted.”

“Fine,” Tony turned on his side, sprawling comfortably on Patrick. “But don’t think this means you’re forgiven.”

“I know, sweetling,” Patrick’s voice sounded like it was coming from far away and Tony gave in and slept.

Some time later, he jerked awake, heart pounding and sweat pouring down his face. Images of Michael stabbing him with the bloody shard of glass – gross, blood poisoning, who knew where and with whom Michael had been – and Ziva shooting out his kneecap while he was down, and Eli laughing maniacally in the background flashed through his mind. Yeah. Not a fun dream, but as he was trying to draw in deep breaths and calm himself down, he realized that he was being hugged and someone was shushing him gently, hands rubbing up and down his back. He stiffened involuntarily before he realized who it was.

“Patrick?” he mumbled.

“Mm-hmm,” Patrick soothed him. “It’s OK. You’re OK, sweetling. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He crumpled into Patrick’s embrace, sighing deeply. He needed to put the whole Michael thing behind him. It was going to be difficult, because Ziva had sided with Michael, Vance had sided with Michael. Hell, even Gibbs had sided with Michael. He felt bereft now, as if he was alone again. He felt the way he’d felt after his mother died. When he had no support whatsoever, and was left to cope with Senior’s ways without any kind of buffer. He’d found a place to belong, people to belong to, when he ran away from that awful summer camp and joined the fair. He’d found Angela and Patrick. And even after Patrick turned away from him in anger and cut off contact with him, Angela had always been a soothing presence. She had never done anything but be supportive of him. She had truly loved him. And after she’d died, he would have been even worse off, except for the fact that Gibbs, Abby, and Ducky had become like family to him. And then eventually there was McGee and Kate, and then Ziva. But now, Tony realized that he didn’t really have a family left at NCIS.

He sighed again, a long, drawn out breath.

“You OK?” Patrick pulled away, looking at him in concern.

“Yeah,” Tony allowed himself one more hug before he pulled away, stretching his hurt shoulder. It was improving every day, and even though the movements still hurt, it wasn’t excruciating the way it had been the last few days. “I have to show you something.”

He went into his closet and brought out the wooden box. It was a box that Gibbs had carved for him, years ago, and given to him as a birthday present. He took it to the living room, sat down next to Patrick on the sofa, and gave the box to him.

Patrick raised an eyebrow, wordlessly asking him a question.

“You should open it,” he told him.

Patrick slowly lifted the lid and gasped, one hand covering his mouth. Slowly, he pulled out a handful of pictures. They were pictures of Angela, and Patrick, and Charlotte. There was a picture of Angela and Charlotte that the nurse had taken moments after Charlotte had been born. He saw their wedding picture, when he and Angela got married. He looked at the back of the photo, and saw in Angela’s untidy scrawl, ‘We do’, and tears welled up in his eyes. In her mind, Angela had been marrying them both that day.

“There are letters, too,” Tony’s voice was hoarse. “From her. She sent me all kinds of things. Pictures. Letters. Artwork Charlotte made. Tickets to your shows. She sent me extra tickets to things you guys went to. The movies, the theater. They’re all in there.”

“Anthony,” Patrick could barely speak. “I’m so sorry. I was stubborn, and arrogant. But I never stopped loving you, either.” Patrick carefully put an arm around him and pulled him close, holding him tightly. “I love you. Angela loved you. We both always will.”

Tony gave himself a moment to drink in the feeling of being held by someone he loved, even though he knew Patrick wouldn’t want to keep him.

“Gonna shower,” he mumbled as he pulled away, glancing at his watch. “You still up for the fair?”

Patrick looked unhappy but he nodded. Tony almost offered to cancel, but he thought this one time he could be selfish. He would take Patrick out for the first time in almost two decades, and he would enjoy and revel in being in Patrick’s company again. Before they went their separate ways and Tony would be free to prepare to defend himself against Red John.

Both he and Patrick showered – separately – and dressed to go out. Even though they were going to the fair, Tony decided to dress up a little, so he had on jeans that were old and worn and he knew they clung to his ass and made him look good. A crisp white shirt, open collar, no tie, and a dark suit jacket completed his look. He fixed his hair and nodded to himself in the mirror. The suit jacket and shirt mostly covered his cast and he wasn’t going to wear his sling for this. Let Patrick remember him as someone who wasn’t as obviously damaged as he was.

When Patrick emerged from the bedroom, clad in a three piece suit complete with vest, but like Tony, with no tie, his shirt collar open, Tony had to calm his beating heart and quell the arousal that went through him. Patrick looked amazing, even though neither the suit nor the shirt had been pressed.

“I could have ironed your shirt,” Tony offered.

“I’ve given up on irons,” Patrick grinned at him. “The most we can hope for with me is that I’m actually dressed and the clothes are, for the most part, clean.”

Tony bit his lip, scrutinizing Patrick. The words had been said cavalierly, even cheerfully, but he knew that Patrick had always been fastidious and careful with his clothes. He’d seen the shows Patrick used to do when they were aired on TV, back before Red John, when Patrick had been doing his psychic thing. Patrick had always worn expensive, designer, three piece suits and ties, with his hair slicked back. He had always looked incredibly put together. Even back during their fair days, Patrick had always been well dressed and taken care of his appearance. It was part of what he was selling to the world, he used to say. It was a costume of a sorts, a façade to show the world that he was a psychic.

Tony had learned that lesson well, modeling his NCIS persona after Patrick in many ways. Dressing carefully in expensive suits and ties, and shoes that cost almost an entire paycheck. He wanted to project a different Tony at NCIS than he had at Baltimore PD or Philly or Peoria. He’d worn expensive suits for his infiltration of the Macaluso mob family, sure, but that hadn’t been him, really. That had been his legend. He’d easily slipped back into being himself after the don went down and the Macaluso crime family dynasty broken up. But for some reason, after Danny’s betrayal of everything Tony believed in, he decided that he couldn’t show himself to the world, naked and vulnerable, like that again. Not even for Gibbs. So he’d used Patrick as an example, and gradually started showing himself to the world as that cocky and confident guy, a man who couldn’t be touched by the normal wear and tear of the world, and he hid himself from everyone but Gibbs and Angela, during their clandestine phone calls and letters.

But Patrick not caring that his suit was pressed, or his shirt ironed and starched, that made Tony worry. That was not normal. Patrick had always cared about how people perceived him, and Tony didn’t quite know what it meant now that Patrick was like this. He wasn’t just running around completely un-put together – he could have ended up in sweatpants and hoodies or something. But he still wore those expensive and now outdated suits, but he didn’t bother actually caring for them or caring how people saw him. Tony didn’t know what that meant for him.

But then Patrick smiled at him and held out his hand. “To the fair?” he grinned.

Tony slipped his hand in Patrick’s and off they went. Patrick drove them in his car, a blue Citroën DS 20 that Tony patted with admiration.

“What year is this? 1973?” he asked.

“1972,” Patrick smiled, eyes bright.

“She’s beautiful,” Tony sighed. “Angela always used to say such mean things about your car.”

Patrick looked at him in shock.

“I’m sorry,” Tony backpedaled. He couldn’t believe he’d done that. Brought Angela up like that, and reminded Patrick that Angela had still been speaking to him the whole time. “Sorry. I-I shouldn’t have…”

“She was jealous, I think,” Patrick gave him a small smile.

“Yeah?” Tony asked, after a long pause.

“She told me that I was lavishing my love on this car instead of on you and that it was a waste,” Patrick shrugged.

“Oh,” Tony couldn’t help it. It was a punch in the gut. They drove in silence, for a while, Tony giving Patrick directions, until while they were at a red light, Patrick reached over and took his hand.

“She was right,” his tone was sad. “She was always right. Especially about you.”

Tony blew out a shuddering breath and laced their fingers together. “She told me to hang on, that you’d come for me.”

“She was right,” Patrick’s smile was tender. “I missed you the whole time.”

“Me too,” Tony whispered.

Angry honks brought them back and Patrick took his hand away to engage the gears and get the car moving. Tony pouted, wishing they could go back to holding hands, but that was the downside of a classic car. Stick shifts weren’t conducive to handholding while driving, especially in the stop and start heavy traffic of DC streets. But Patrick reached over again as they drove, pulled his hand to him and dropped a soft kiss on the back of his hand. Then he put Tony’s hand on his thigh, and they drove the rest of the way with Tony’s hand on Patrick’s thigh, feeling his muscles move under the fabric of his pants as he worked the pedals of the car. Patrick put a hand on Tony’s whenever he could, anchoring him, and for the first time in years, Tony felt as if he could breathe.

When they got to the fair, Tony was bouncing around excitedly again, as if he were back in his late teens and running around with Patrick and Angela. He couldn’t stop smiling as they walked through the fair, Patrick’s arm around his waist. There was no mistaking the possessive way in which Patrick held him. And given what they knew about the inner workings of most of the games, they cleaned up at all of the little stalls. Tony was shooting down the ducks in rapid succession, even though one arm was in a cast. Not only was he a crack shot, but he knew the trick of where to actually aim to ‘hit’ a duck. All of the games were rigged, so it would be difficult to win, but Tony took them all down, blam blam blam. He pointed to the biggest prize hanging – an ugly purple stuffed bunny, presenting it to the next little girl that they walked by afterwards.

They walked through the fair, eating funnel cakes and ice cream and cotton candy and fried chicken, playing all the games, laughing with each other as well as at each other. They even rode the Ferris wheel, Tony practically in Patrick’s lap, both of them silent as they remembered Angela. Angela had claimed to hate the Ferris wheel, but secretly she had loved it. Loved being squished between her two men, as she used to call them, and loved kissing them both while the machinery moved them around. They were on the Ferris wheel again at closing time, enjoying the fireworks that ended the night at the fair. They made their way back to Patrick’s car hand in hand, Tony toting a Pikachu stuffed toy that was half as tall as he was, obnoxiously bright yellow in color, and Patrick had a large, pink stuffed unicorn that glittered, and they both had smiles on their faces.

At the car, they tossed the oversized stuffed animals into the back seat and Patrick pinned Tony to the car, his fingers in Tony’s hair. His eyes were dark with arousal, trained on Tony’s lips, making Tony lick them. The appearance of Tony’s tongue seemed to solidify something and Patrick leaned up, pulling Tony’s head down to his, pressing their lips together.

The kiss was soft and chaste, and when Patrick pulled away, Tony whimpered. “Is this OK?” Patrick asked.

Tony yanked Patrick back and kissed him again, and this time it was anything but chaste. He opened his mouth, allowing Patrick’s tongue to enter, and kissed back, hard, sucking on Patrick’s tongue and giving himself to Patrick in the moment. Patrick tasted like cotton candy and soda, the last things they had consumed, and he wondered if he was as sweet. He could feel Patrick’s dick, hard against his hip, Patrick’s thigh inserted between his legs, giving his own erection a place to rut into. Tony forgot about the people walking by, everyone leaving the fair, forgot where he was, lost in the heat of Patrick’s lips, bruising his.

The sound of a throat clearing sharply made Tony pull back.

“Excuse us,” a woman said politely, gesturing to the door of the car next to them in the lot that they were blocking.

The man with her rolled his eyes and snorted with derision.

“I do apologize,” Patrick was effusive in his apology, pushing Tony along with him, not letting their lower halves separate, and closing the passenger side door that had been open. It gave the man room to get to his door, but Patrick had turned away and gone back to kissing Tony as if his life depended on it.

They sprang apart when the car honked loudly, and the man yelled “Get a fucking room!” before he drove off, car engine roaring angrily.

Tony gave Patrick a guilty look, and they both started laughing. Patrick kissed the corner of his mouth and dropped soft kisses down his neck and Tony arched it, giving Patrick more room to move, but they weren’t the biting kisses that he used to love. Patrick wasn’t going to fuck him in a parking lot that was still full of people. Even if Tony would let him. Instead, Patrick was pulling away with a regretful sigh.

“When did you get so tall?” he playfully complained.

“Had a growth spurt in college,” Tony shrugged.

“You look and feel and taste amazing,” Patrick smiled at him. He claimed Tony’s mouth one more time, but pulled away when Tony started to wind his arms around him and tried to deepen the kiss. “At home, sweetling,” he murmured. “Let me take you apart at home.”

Tony nodded, and fought the pain that threatened to overcome him. This was his one night with Patrick. Patrick’s people would come, and Patrick would go back to California, and Tony would be alone again. But Tony was a survivor, and he was going to take whatever Patrick gave him this one night, and enjoy it to the fullest. He would treasure every moment Patrick gave him now. Even if it would take a lot to put himself back together afterwards, he would give himself this gift. Patrick, for the little time that he could have him.


	5. Patrick

**Chapter Five: Patrick**

[](https://i.imgur.com/XIW9aOn.png)

Patrick could hardly recall the drive back to Anthony’s apartment and they were extremely lucky to have made it back safely. His brain was consumed with love and lust and want. It was the first time that he’d felt this way in a very long time, and even though a small part of his brain kept telling him that he should feel guilty for feeling like this, that he didn’t deserve to feel this way, the majority of him just wanted Anthony again. The emotions that Patrick had tamped down for all these years were flooding out of him. His love could no longer be contained.

The date had been perfect. The fair was a balm to his soul, a reminder of Angela and how much neither man would ever forget her, even while they could perhaps forge on through life together without her and learn to be happy together without her. After all, Patrick had learned to be happy with Angela even without Anthony. Patrick realized that he would never feel complete again without Angela with them, but he was as close as he would ever get, now that Angela had died. But having Anthony again would change everything in his life. Everything. Patrick now had something he loved that he could lose to Red John. Again. And this time, Patrick was not going to let that happen.

Being with Anthony tonight was everything that Patrick needed to soothe his wounds. Feeling Anthony’s lips on his, their tongues dueling again, god, he had missed how Anthony tasted. So different from Angela, yet with his own unique sweetness that no one would ever match up to.

Patrick had his arms around Anthony, hugging him from behind, sucking and biting the back of his neck and thrusting his hard dick against Anthony’s ass while the other man was trying to unlock his front door. Finally, Anthony got the door open and they stumbled in. Patrick kicked the door shut behind him and Anthony turned to face him, pinning him to the door, claiming his mouth with a fire that was simultaneously so different from the shy young boy that he once had been, yet exactly the same since he tasted just as sweet and perfect as he used to, and his breathless moans were exactly the same as they used to be. The boy had become a man, and Patrick could not wait to explore his body again and learn all the new things about him as well as revisit his old favorite places.

They kissed, his body pressed tightly to the door, Anthony’s muscled body rubbing up against him. Patrick wondered if Anthony was strong enough to fuck him up against the wall and his rock hard dick blurted pre-cum at the thought. Patrick closed his eyes and lost himself in the feel of Anthony’s lips and tongue and teeth, running his hands through Anthony’s soft hair and up and down his sides, feeling the strong muscles bunch and gather as he moved. Patrick’s legs were spread, and Anthony rolled his hips, rubbing their hardness against each other, causing him to moan.

Patrick kept expecting Angela’s hands and lips as well, and he kept looking around, waiting for her to join them. It was rare that Angela ever sat back to just watch him and Anthony go at it when they were young, and having Anthony in his arms again made him expect that third set of hands and lips to be in the mix. He did keep thinking that Angela would be watching, and see her out of the corner of his eye, but she never was. Anthony rolled his hips again, their dicks rubbing against each other.

“Bedroom,” Patrick muttered, even as he yanked Anthony’s hair, angling his head so he could suck and nip at the cords of his neck.

Anthony paused and gave him a surprised look, but before Patrick could ask him what the matter was, his lips were again being devoured. Anthony’s skills at kissing had somehow improved over the years, even though he and Angela had been the ones to teach him how to kiss them. Patrick had no idea how many people Anthony had kissed in the interim, but none of that mattered because right now, Anthony was kissing him again.

Anthony rolled his hips once more before he nodded and pulled away, taking Patrick’s hand and lacing their fingers together.

“Lock the door,” Patrick told him.

Anthony rolled his eyes but obeyed, doing up all of the locks one handed, not letting Patrick go. But now it was Patrick who was dragging Anthony to the bedroom. “I should probably get a home security system installed,” Anthony mused.

Patrick nodded, his eyes serious now. He didn’t think that Red John would come tonight, not while Patrick was here. It didn’t seem to be Red John’s style. He would want to sneak in and kill Anthony but he would only want to do so in a way that Patrick would be the one to discover Anthony’s dead body, the smiley face in Anthony’s blood a teaser to what he would find on the bed. He sighed and pushed that thought out of his head. Tonight, Anthony was his again and he was not going to waste a moment of it thinking about Red John. Red John had taken enough away from Patrick. He would not let him affect this night with Anthony, because this was the only night he had to convince Anthony to run away with him. It was kind of a parallel of what had happened years ago, only this time the stakes were so much higher. Patrick needed Anthony, like he needed air to breathe, and he knew that leaving Anthony behind would only result in giving Red John the chance he needed to strike the final blow against Patrick. He was not going to lose Anthony at this point. He needed to make sure Anthony knew that he was playing for keeps this time. He wanted Anthony back in his life, and he needed to find a way for Anthony to want to be a part of his life again.

“You with me?” Anthony’s voice cut through the haze, and Patrick saw the question in Anthony’s eyes. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“I do want to, Anthony,” Patrick cupped his face tenderly, and kissed him softly, pouring all the love and need that he could into that one kiss. Anthony was his everything. Anthony, Angela and Charlotte had been everything to him, and now he only had Anthony to lavish his love on. “I want you. I love you. I never stopped loving you, sweetling.”

Anthony pulled away and smiled, a small shy smile, even as his face flushed in pleasure, eyes downcast so demurely that Patrick couldn’t help but remember the shy young boy that he and Angela had met all those years ago.

Patrick waited until Anthony’s gorgeous green eyes met his again. “I’m yours,” Patrick told him, his voice hoarse. “I’ve always been yours.”

Anthony’s smile wobbled, but he said nothing in response. Instead, he sealed their lips and kissed Patrick until they were both breathless and panting. Somehow, they ended up on Anthony’s tiny little bed, both of them naked and hard.

“Angela wouldn’t fit on this with us,” Anthony murmured, as he laid on his back while Patrick sprawled on top of him.

“She would have found a way,” Patrick grinned.

“She would have,” Anthony agreed, and Patrick saw tears well up in his eyes.

“Sweetling,” gently he swiped Anthony’s tears away with his thumbs.

“I miss her,” Anthony whispered.

“Me, too,” Patrick whispered back, this time kissing the tears off of Anthony’s cheek. He thought he could see Angela smiling at them out of the corner of his eyes and he resisted the urge to look, because he knew that she wouldn’t be there. They had both lost her.

“I missed you, too,” Anthony admitted.

Patrick ran his fingers through Anthony’s soft hair and sighed. “I missed you, as well. But I’m here now,” he told him softly. “I’m here for you. I’m yours.”

A shadow passed over Anthony’s face, an emotion that Patrick couldn’t identify because it disappeared almost as soon as it appeared. Anthony had iron control over his micro expressions, which made him difficult for Patrick to read. Especially, since he was so emotionally invested in the man.

“Will you fuck me, Patrick?” Anthony asked, his eyes wide, his pupils still dark with arousal.

“Whatever you want, love,” Patrick rolled his hips and their hard cocks slipped against each other.

“Yeah,” Anthony moaned. He tried to reach for his side table drawer, but it was on the side where his arm was in a cast and he was having trouble.

“Let me,” Patrick nipped at his ear. He reached for the drawer and pulled out a half empty tub of lube, bringing it back, raising an eyebrow at him. “Have you been a naughty boy, my sweet?”

Anthony laughed. “That tub is only for my own personal use,” he smirked.

“Well I hope you’re not averse to sharing your personal things.”

“Only with you,” Anthony said, his words felt like a promise to Patrick.

Patrick began kissing his way down Anthony’s body. He was tanned and gorgeous, he had even developed chest hair. Patrick nuzzled his way down to a nipple to see if he was still as sensitive there as he used to be, and when he wrapped his lips around the little bud, Anthony arched his back and cried out. Patrick sucked on it, feeling triumphant as Anthony’s fingers tightened in his hair and he kept swearing. Young Anthony had been so circumspect with his words, so worried about people’s feelings and worried about attracting attention, never using profanities, but this Anthony had no such limitations. He used four letter words with impunity. Patrick wondered what he would say when he finally reached Anthony’s dick. Well. No time like the present to find out, right? he told himself.

He gave Anthony’s nipple one final nip before he meandered downwards, kissing and licking every defined abdominal muscle the man had. This Anthony had a six-pack. This Anthony was not just fit, but fighting fit. This Anthony wasn’t just a young and skinny teen heart throb. This Anthony was a tall drink of water. This Anthony was heart stoppingly gorgeous. Patrick’s observant eyes took note of the new scars that were scattered about Anthony’s body, proof that Anthony had not lived an easy life, stopping to kiss each and every one of them.

“Patrick, _c’mon_ ,” Anthony whined, hips thrusting upwards. His cock was hard, red and angry. It was still the most beautiful dick Patrick had ever seen. “Fuck me already.”

“I haven’t seen you in years, sweetling,” Patrick told him. “I have to study your body and learn what you like all over again.”

“I like your dick in my ass right now, how about?” Anthony raised his head and growled at him. “You can fucking explore my body later.” Anthony punctuated his sentence with another frustrated growl and practically threw the tub of lube at him.

Fuck. That growl did things to Patrick’s dick, making it jerk and twitch against his belly. This Anthony was demanding and confident in bed, and Patrick found it incredibly sexy. He could hear Angela telling him to fuck him already so Anthony could get inside her. God, they would have had some incredible sex, the three of them, with Anthony all grown up, all confident and demanding.

He smiled at Anthony, making his way lower. He slicked his fingers up as he nuzzled against Anthony’s hard cock, exploring the twitching organ with his cheek and his lips. His tongue darted out to lick the pearl of moisture off of the tip of his beautiful cock.

“Patrick, come _on_ ,” Anthony half growled at him, curling his body up so he could glare at Patrick. The movement caused his six-pack to flex, defined in a way that made Patrick’s dick drool.

“Fuck, you’re fucking gorgeous, Anthony,” Patrick told him, rubbing a slick finger around Anthony’s pucker, but not pushing in yet.

“Yeah, yeah,” Anthony griped. “Can we get a move onnn… oh _fuck_!”

Patrick grinned at him, lips stretched around the head of Anthony’s dick. He sucked hard, and Anthony thrust upwards, pushing his dick further into Patrick’s mouth. Anthony’s cock tasted exactly the same, maybe even better than it used to. Patrick wasted no time sucking hard and bobbing his mouth down, trying to take more of him in. There was a time when he used to be able to swallow Anthony down all the way, but it had been a very long time since Patrick had sucked cock, so he hoped that Anthony would give him some leeway to re-learn the art of sucking his dick. Anthony was moaning hard, though, so it looked like there were no complaints yet.

Patrick pushed a lubed finger into Anthony’s tight hole and crooked it upwards to where he knew Anthony’s prostate was, and the man keened and practically choked Patrick when he arched up and pushed his dick all the way almost to Patrick’s throat.

“Yeah,” Anthony panted. “Fuck, yeah. Oh fuck, _fuck, yeah_ ,” he moaned with every bob of Patrick’s head. His balls were already drawn up tight, and his hand came down, grabbing the base of his cock. “Gonna make me come too soon,” he complained.

Patrick bobbed up and down a few more times, smiling as Anthony’s fingers tightened around his cock, trying to stave off his orgasm. He gave Anthony’s head a final intense suck before he pulled off and focused instead on preparing Anthony. He pushed a second finger in and began scissoring them, every so often rubbing Anthony’s prostate and making him stuff a fist into his mouth.

Patrick reached a hand up and pulled his arm down. “Let me hear you, sweetling,” he ordered the man. “I’ve waited so long to hear you.”

Anthony nodded and stopped trying to muffle the sounds he was making. He practically wailed when Patrick stuck his tongue deep inside Anthony’s body, holding his rim open with his index fingers. It was music to his ears. Patrick had to rush the rest of the prep, ending with four fingers deep inside his lover, tapping his prostate from the outside as well as inside, the method that Angela had discovered was guaranteed to make Anthony practically lose his mind. Patrick felt smug and satisfied that it still worked like a charm, and Anthony’s dick was drooling copious amounts of pre-cum that he kept having to lick away, even though he loved to see the viscous liquid drip onto Anthony’s belly.

Finally, when he couldn’t wait any longer, he removed his fingers and reached for the lube again. “Do you want to use a condom?” he managed to ask Anthony. He and Anthony had not used any prophylactics, back in the day, but he didn’t want to presume that Anthony would be comfortable doing this bareback again.

“I don’t even have any condoms in the house,” Anthony looked like he was trying to force himself to focus on the conversation. “I’m clean as of my last physical a couple months ago, and I’m fine without if you are.”

“There’s been no one since Angela. And you,” Patrick told him solemnly, although his mind was buzzing with the knowledge that Anthony kept no condoms in his home, and had a tiny little twin bed. He didn’t want to jump to the assumption that Anthony did not bring the people he had sex with home with him then. But that was the assumption he was jumping to, he couldn’t deny it.

Anthony gave him a sad smile and nodded. He leaned up and kissed Patrick hard, and Patrick knew that he understood. Patrick hadn’t had sex with anyone since Angela died, and the only people he had had sex with ever were Angela and Anthony. There had never been anyone else for him. Anthony reached for the lube and slicked Patrick’s hard dick himself, kissing Patrick thoroughly as he jerked him off, slow and tight, swiping his thumb on the head, causing Patrick to moan.

Patrick pushed him back down on the bed and grabbed a pillow to place under Anthony’s ass. “This OK?” he asked. He knew that Anthony used to prefer being fucked on hands and knees, but Patrick wanted to see Anthony’s face. He didn’t want the other man to hide anything from him.

Anthony smiled and nodded, seeming to understand what Patrick was saying. He opened his legs and wrapped them around Patrick’s back, causing Patrick’s dick to rub against Anthony’s hole, as if requesting entrance. He pushed in, and when his head popped through the tight ring of muscles, they both moaned. Anthony was tight. His slippery channel hugged Patrick’s dick tight, the way it always used to. Patrick couldn’t believe how good it felt. Anthony’s legs tightened around Patrick’s back, trying to pull him in further.

Patrick moved one of his legs up over his shoulder with a playful grin before he began thrusting in and out, slowly getting deeper and deeper into Anthony’s body, until he was finally sheathed all the way, his balls flush against Anthony’s ass. Anthony was moaning and breathing hard, sweat sheening his forehead.

“I love you,” Patrick leaned down, careful not to stretch Anthony’s leg too much, but the man was flexible as all hell. He captured Anthony’s lips and shoved his tongue into his mouth as he pulled out and thrust back in.

Anthony moaned, his eyelids fluttering shut. Patrick pulled out and began thrusting in earnest, and when he finally released Anthony from the kiss, he sat back on his heels and began fucking into the man. The change in the angle made Anthony cry out and Patrick knew that he’d found Anthony’s prostate. He kept on fucking the man at that angle, harder and harder, drilling him and obeying Anthony’s moaned orders of harder, and faster, and right fucking there.

Patrick was fast losing control, his thrusts starting to get erratic. He could feel his orgasm building, his balls drawing up, that deliciously tense feeling collecting in his groin. He kept his eyes open, watching as Anthony writhed under him, warm and wet and tight, so fucking tight around his dick. He could almost feel Angela breathing on his neck, kissing him there as she reached around to jerk Anthony off, one hand around Anthony’s dick, while Anthony’s fingers were buried in her cunt, thumb flicking her clit just the way she liked it. Even though Angela wasn’t with them anymore, Patrick could feel her love and acceptance envelop them and that only made this homecoming that much more real.

In lieu of Angela, he fisted Anthony’s dick and began jacking him off, trying his hardest not to lose his rhythm and tried to keep fucking right into Anthony’s prostate. Anthony’s cries were getting louder and louder, his eyes closed and his mouth open with pleasure. Patrick fucked him hard, desperately holding on to his control, in and out, in and out and in, and finally, Anthony’s eyes opened, wild and urgent as he began coming, his dick spurting creamy jets of cum, his body tightening on Patrick’s dick, a hoarse cry pulled from his throat. Patrick did his best to fuck him through his orgasm before he finally gave in to his own release, thrusting in and shooting his seed deep into Anthony’s body. His orgasm was long, seemingly unending, and so fucking fulfilling, and he shuddered, thrusting shallowly as he emptied himself into the other man, keeping his eyes trained on Anthony’s, and Anthony was staring right back at him in return. Anthony’s green eyes were burned into his brain as he whited out at the intensity of his orgasm.

When he finally came back to himself, he was collapsed on top of Anthony, Anthony’s long fingers running slowly through his hair.

“Been a while, huh?” Anthony’s voice was soft and sympathetic.

Patrick nuzzled into his neck and kissed him. “Too long,” he sighed. “Fuck, sweetling. I love you.”

“Love you,” Anthony whispered back hesitantly, and Patrick hated himself for putting that hesitance in Anthony. It was his fault Anthony was alone. It was his fault for refusing to let go of his anger, refusing to understand that they had been children, and Anthony had wanted to grow up first before he came back to him and Angela. And despite it all, Anthony had kept his faith in Angela and in him, somehow managing to be in a long distance relationship with Angela even while Patrick, at the height of his success and filled with hubris, had thought that Angela would eventually forget him and only be Patrick’s. How wrong he had been, and how much had he hurt not just Anthony but also Angela with his pride and stubbornness? Patrick sighed and tightened his grip on Anthony, filled with regret at his past actions, but so fucking thankful that he was holding Anthony now, and in Anthony’s bed tonight.

They stayed that way for a long while, Patrick nuzzling into Anthony’s neck and Anthony’s fingers rubbing soft circles up and down his back and through his hair.


	6. Tony

**Chapter Six: Tony**

[](https://i.imgur.com/77VYHjy.png)

Tony was warm and comfortable and sated, Patrick’s body sprawled bonelessly on top of him. He should be trying to squirm out from under him, and trying to get cleaned up so he could leave, but it was Patrick. Not to mention, they were at Tony’s apartment. It wasn’t like Tony could just up and leave his own apartment and leave Patrick to his own devices. Where would Tony go if this happened? It wasn’t like Tony had people here in DC that he could count on. That was another strange thing about this whole encounter. Tony had never had sex with another person in his apartment. It was his bolt hole, his sanctuary. He kept his trysts far from his home. So yeah, Tony had had sex with Patrick here, in a place where he wouldn’t be able to escape these memories, and even though it had felt a little strange taking anyone to his own bed, it was Patrick. It was _Patrick_. This wasn’t one of Tony’s many one night stands. This was Patrick. Patrick and Angela had been everything to him once upon a time, and they still were. Tony had waited for more than half his life for Patrick, and he would willingly wait the rest of it, if Patrick would forgive him and take him back. But he knew, deep down, that it would never happen. Patrick had been so angry with him all those years ago, and now after what had happened with Angela and Charlotte, there was no way he would ever forgive Tony. No matter what he might say now, Tony couldn’t imagine how Patrick could ever overlook the fact that Tony had walked away from them and left Angela and Charlotte defenseless.

Even though this thought squeezed his heart tight and made him short of breath, he refused to stop caressing the man, letting his fingers run through his blond curls, still so fucking gorgeous. Patrick had become even more beautiful the older they got. The crow’s feet around his eyes were new. They crinkled up when he smiled or laughed and only added to his sex appeal. His eyes were still as blue as ever, still sharp and shrewd. Tony felt like he’d come home.

It had been a different experience though, because they had just had sex, just the two of them, for the first time without Angela in the mix and even though there was a stab of pain and loss there that Tony knew would never go away, at the end there he’d swear that he could feel Angela’s presence in their bed, touching him, touching them both. Towards the end, he and Patrick had kept their eyes on each other, unable to look away.

It was odd, because in the past it had felt to Tony that Patrick was ever only truly himself at the moment of release. But it seemed as if this new Patrick, older, wiser, weighed down with grief and loss, seemed to be much more open with who he was because he had been himself during the entire time. Before sex, during sex, after sex, during orgasm, the whole time. He no longer seemed to maintain that persona of his, the showman, the mysterious psychic thing. Maybe losing Angela and Charlotte had made it impossible to keep that mask on. But even with these changes, it had felt right when he had been barreling towards completion, he could practically feel Angela’s touches, hear her soft moans, feel himself fucking into her as Patrick fucked him, the way they used to do at times. They had been flexible about who was inside who and doing what at any point in time, back in the day. Back then, as it was today, the sex felt as if Tony had finally come home after a very long time away. As if Tony finally belonged somewhere again.

It would be difficult for him to adjust to not belonging anywhere again after this was over. He wondered, after Patrick went back to California, if he would still feel her phantom touches when he fantasized about Patrick in bed. Whether his fantasies would be of the three of them as they had been when they were young, or if his dreams would now include this Patrick and the Angela of the photographs that she had been sending over the years.

Tony sighed and continued to run his hands over Patrick’s body. He was resigned to this being his only night with the man. It was why he had insisted on a date, just the two of them. Before Patrick’s CBI people found them, and before Tony had to go back to work. Before their real lives could claim them again. Tony was under no illusion that he would be anywhere else but back to where he was before Patrick showed up after Patrick left. Gibbs would be punishing him for whatever transgression, imagined or real, that he might have committed. Tony would stay at NCIS for the foreseeable future, and Patrick would return to California and go back to hunting Red John. But at least Tony would have this one night and its memory would have to be enough to last him the rest of his life.

A small part of Tony was hoping that Red John would come after him. Maybe then he would be able to take him down, or kill him if he couldn’t be stopped. With any luck, maybe he and Red John would end up killing each other, and then Tony wouldn’t even have to worry about what came after. Because what came after was always drab and sad. Tony’s life had only ever been amazing when he was with Patrick and Angela. Before them, it had been sad and lonely. A childhood of neglect and abuse. Everything changed when he had found Patrick and Angela. So much so that even though he had loved his time in college and the frat that he joined, the football team, the basketball team, the police academy and his subsequent career in law enforcement, even though he had enjoyed his life, throughout it all he had always felt as if he was only living half a life. Nothing was ever truly wonderful or fulfilling. He’d preferred to waste his time watching movies so he could live in the fantasy world, and in his own head, especially after his relationship with Gibbs soured. What was the point of living a life all alone anyway?

And sure, he had tried to forget Angela and Patrick. He’d tried to move on with no success. He’d even had relationships, almost gotten married to Wendy, and there was even his fucked up feelings for poor Jeanne Benoit. But they had all been stopgaps. All of them had never felt as real to him as the time he’d spent with Angela and Patrick.

Maybe it made him an idealistic fool, still full of youthful dreams even though what he should be now was realistic and bitter, but Angela had kept it all going for him for so many years. Losing her had been almost too much for him to bear, and he’d basically only kept himself going because he knew he needed to account for himself to Patrick. To own his guilt, and take whatever punishment Patrick wanted to mete out.

It was odd, then, that Patrick was here, taking such good care of him and his broken arm, fighting his battles with Gibbs for him, fucking him into oblivion, and speaking words of love instead of words of hate. Tony didn’t understand what the hell was going on. But he knew that he couldn’t just allow himself to take Patrick at face value. Senior had certainly taught him that lesson well: nothing and no one was ever to be taken at face value. Do so only at your own peril. So Tony was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Right now he’d convinced himself that Patrick just needed to have one last goodbye fuck before walking out of his life forever, and that was more than Tony deserved. So he was already trying to prepare for the heartbreak that might come after. But that was for later. Right now, he was going to lie here, keep breathing in the earthy, musky scent of his lover, and hold on tight to him. After Patrick left, he knew that there would be so little of Tony left that he would probably welcome Red John coming to end his life. But he would have some surprises for the man, to make up for how he’d failed Angela and Charlotte. Tony wouldn’t allow himself to go down easy, even if he might deserve whatever Red John wanted to do to him.

So Tony laid there, holding Patrick, caressing him, even though Patrick’s dead weight was starting to get heavy, he didn’t care. One night. He would take whatever Patrick wanted to give him this one night.

Finally, Patrick raised his head and elbowed his weight off of Tony, smiling tenderly at him. Tony said something, but he could barely remember what he might have said, because Patrick was kissing him and holding him in such a way that he felt as if he were _cherished_.

“Fuck, sweetling. I love you,” Patrick whispered in his ear.

“Love you,” the response was automatic, even though Tony wasn’t sure if that was what Patrick wanted to hear. It was what he felt. It had always been how he felt about Patrick and Angela, and Charlotte, who should have also been his daughter.

They were silent for a long time, just holding each other, dropping soft kisses on random parts of their bodies, just reveling in each other’s touch. Skin on skin again. After a while, Patrick sighed and kissed Tony, his tongue delving into Tony’s mouth, so gentle and loving that it brought tears to Tony’s eyes.

“Gonna clean you up, OK?” Patrick told him, and they both groaned when he separated their torsos that had stuck together with dried come. Patrick laughed at that, though. “One moment, OK? Don’t move.”

He got off the bed after one last kiss, and Tony heard sounds in the bathroom. Patrick came back moments later, all damp and wiped up, and he brought a warm, wet washcloth which he used to gently clean Tony’s belly, dick and his ass.

“How’s your arm?” Patrick asked. “You should take some of the painkillers they gave you.”

Tony shook his head. “I don’t want to get all loopy,” he said. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“You have the rest of the week off.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Gibbs won’t accept that.”

“You have a doctor’s note.”

As if that would do a thing for Gibbs’ temper, Tony thought. “Look, Patrick, work is kind of… uh… strange right now and I don’t want to sink even further in my boss’s estimation.” It was true. He didn’t need any more black marks against him. Gibbs was sure to crucify him especially if he did take the whole week off. He had no choice but to go to work tomorrow to start the damage control.

“He made you work with a broken arm,” Patrick glared at him.

“I don’t want to fight about this, Patrick. I don’t want the painkillers,” Tony rubbed his eyes. Because sure, he had to be at work first thing the next morning, but even more importantly, he had another reason why he didn’t want to be drugged to the gills tonight. It was his one and only night with Patrick, and he would be damned if he wasted it being all loopy and not remembering anything past a certain point. He’d already wasted the previous night in a haze of pain before the forgetfulness that the drugs brought him.

Patrick sighed and kissed Tony tenderly. “Why are you pushing yourself so hard for this man?” his tone was gentle.

“It’s my job and I don’t want to discuss this,” Tony tried to sound firm, but he probably sounded pathetic. Whatever. As long as Patrick didn’t try to drug him up tonight.

“OK, sweetling,” Patrick nodded. “I won’t push it, but I want you to know that this discussion isn’t over. No one has the right to treat you like this.”

Tony shrugged. His entire life was filled with people treating him like shit, so it wasn’t anything new to him. It just was extra painful that Gibbs, who he used to trust with everything – except his past with Patrick and Angela – had also fallen into the pattern of behavior that Tony had come to expect from everyone who ever knew him.

“I’ll make you breakfast and drive you to work tomorrow, OK?” Patrick was trying to mollify him.

Tony nodded and gave him a small smile. Every gentle word from Patrick was a bittersweet stab to his heart. He wanted to hoard all of Patrick’s words, all of the sweet gestures, so he would be able to replay them in his mind whenever he wanted to, once Patrick was gone again. He wasn’t in a particular hurry to fall asleep either. It would be fine with him if Patrick fell asleep and Tony just laid awake and held him all night. He would take every second they had together and hope that it would be enough to last him a lifetime.

“Sweetling, do you mind if we turn the lights on and look through the box of things Angela sent you?” Patrick asked.

Of course. He would want to see what Angela had sent Tony. Maybe he would want to take some of it, keepsakes for himself of a woman that they had both loved. He made a move to get up, but Patrick flapped a hand at him, muttering something about resting, and broken arms and whatnot, so Tony nodded and pointed to the closet, where he had put the box away earlier. Still buck naked, Patrick walked into Tony’s closet, found the box, and brought it back to the bed.

Tony sat up, leaning against the headboard and Patrick threw himself onto the bed, bouncing a little on Tony’s mattress. He bumped up next to Tony, their naked sides and thighs flush against each other, and he threw an arm around Tony.

“Angela was right,” Patrick murmured, opening the box. “You were always what was missing in our lives. I’m sorry I was so goddamned stubborn, love. I’m sorry I hurt you like that. You and Angela both.”

Tony shrugged. “I wanted too much…” he whispered. “I was too arrogant.”

“Never say that,” Patrick’s blue eyes were serious, his tone firm, his fingers on Tony’s chin. “Never _ever_ say that, Anthony. You did the right thing.”

“I left.”

“You were going to come back. You didn’t leave. You just needed to make a detour,” Patrick’s eyes were still on his, wide and solemn. “I was wrong, Anthony. I was so wrong to do what I did to you. To us all. I hope that you’ll forgive me for it, one day.”

Tony wanted so much to believe Patrick, but he couldn’t quite make himself do it, so he gave him a small smile and didn’t say anything.

They sifted through the box, and Patrick looked at all the different photos that Angela had sent Tony, smiling at all of the words she scrawled on the back. Patrick gave him more background on some of the artwork from Charlotte, and some details and stories from his own perspective. Tony pointed out some of the funnier passages in the letters, letters that he had read at least a thousand times. Angela sharing their lives with him, what she sent him in this box, these were the most important things to him.

When they got to the wedding photo, where Angela had written ‘we do’ on the back of it, Patrick ran his index finger on Angela’s words, and her face, before he turned to Tony.

“We do,” he told Tony, nodding at him. It sounded like a vow and Tony couldn’t help but blow out his breath in a half strangled sob, his eyes welling with tears, which Patrick gently brushed away. “I do, too. Always, you and me and Angela. Always, sweetling.” He fumbled and with great difficulty pulled the wedding ring off of his finger. “Look at what Angela inscribed on our rings…”

Tony peered at the ring and saw, ‘AR + ADD + PJ’.

“I wanted to be angry about it,” Patrick shrugged. “But she just gave me that look and I didn’t say a word about it.” A smile tugged at his lips.

Tony stared at Patrick who was still flipping the ring in his hand, absently running his old legerdemain tricks, making it the ring appear and disappear, before he took Tony’s hand. Tony had to stop him from whatever it was he was going to do. He scrabbled in his nightstand drawer and pulled out a chain that had a ring on it, handing it to Patrick. “She sent me one, too,” he couldn’t get his voice to work properly, and tears kept dripping down his face.

Patrick gasped, his smile wide and happy as he looked at the ring. It was the exact same ring, with the exact same inscription on the inside as his had. He pulled it off the chain, and took Tony’s left hand. “Will you wear our ring, my love?” he asked.

“If you want me to,” Tony shrugged, trying not to let his heart jump out of his chest. This was a one night only thing, he reminded himself. He couldn’t take any of this seriously. Reality was going to crash down and leave him alone and miserable again come morning. That was what always happened.

But Patrick’s smile brightened, and he gently put the ring on Tony’s ring finger. The same ring that Tony had worn in the privacy of his apartment on the days when he had felt the lowest. When he missed Patrick and Angela the most. Now Patrick was the one sliding it onto his finger, and giving him a look filled with so much love and hope that Tony didn’t know what to do with it.

“I know I’ve treated you terribly, but I want to make it up to you. I want to show you how much I love you. I want to keep you safe, and make it so you never doubt whether you belong with us, ever again. Because you do. I’ll earn your trust and your love again, and maybe one day you’ll agree to marry me, so we can make it legal,” Patrick told him. “It’s what Angela would have wanted for us.”

Tony sniffled, and Patrick kissed his hand and the ring, and kissed his tears away.

“Please don’t cry, my sweet, sweet Anthony,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry that I held on to my anger for so long. I’m so sorry that I kept you away. You can’t imagine how happy I am that you’re still willing to give me a second chance.”

Tony nodded. He wanted _so much_ to believe Patrick. He really did. But how could he? His entire life he had been taught that happiness was fleeting. After a few months Patrick would tire of him, and things would be over for good between them. And when that happened, it would be even worse than if Patrick had just walked away after tonight. Could Tony really take that kind of chance? There would be nothing left of him if Patrick decided to keep him, but only for a little while. But it sounded amazing. He had waited so long for Patrick to come back for him. He wanted this so much, despite the fact that it would end so badly for him.

He didn’t know what to do.

Patrick kept giving him searching looks as they continued to go through the contents of the box but Tony tried to not to allow the conversation to come back to the state of their so-called relationship. He decided that he couldn’t afford to even imagine that this could be a possibility. He clung fast to the idea that this was a one night thing, one night for him to love Patrick and for Patrick to love him. He would expect nothing from him after this. Even though the memory of Patrick putting a ring on his finger would be burned into his brain forever.

Finally, Patrick put the box away, forced Tony into at least taking some aspirin and drinking a full glass of water, and slipped into the bed with him. Their bodies were entwined, the only way that two full grown men could fit on Tony’s twin bed. Patrick had interlaced their fingers together, and he kept stroking the ring that he had put on Tony’s hand.

It was _so_ hard to keep telling himself not to want this. So, so hard. Patrick was warm and loving and so fucking sincere. Tony knew that Patrick thought that he was telling him the truth about his feelings, but he couldn’t really count on it. Tony couldn’t count on anyone but himself, now that Angela had died. So he kept his mouth shut, and enjoyed having Patrick as his own for this one night. But that was all he could count on, and that was all he was expecting, no matter the sweet nothings that came out of Patrick’s mouth.

Even though he tried hard to stay awake for the rest of the night, he was too tired and his arm really did hurt like a son of a bitch, so he accidentally fell asleep, Patrick’s warm breath on his skin, Patrick’s arms around him, still gently fingering the ring he’d put on Tony’s finger. And in the morning, Patrick somehow came up with yogurt, fresh fruit, eggs and toast for breakfast. Tony didn’t know when Patrick must have gone out for groceries, because he knew for sure he had nothing by way of fresh produce and any yogurt that might have been in his refrigerator would have most definitely been fuzzy by now.

Patrick drove him to work, as promised, and Tony knew that his sharp eyes were not missing the fact that Tony had taken the ring off his finger. Tony didn’t need the hassle he would get from Gibbs and McGee and everyone else for coming in to work wearing a wedding ring, so he decided he wouldn’t leave it on his finger. Patrick gave him a worried look, but Tony just smiled, kissed him goodbye, and went in to work. Tony was nothing if not the champion of surviving his own life.


	7. Gibbs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, I quote dialogue from NCIS s06e25 Aliyah. All quoted dialogue is in italics. For a transcript of the entire episode, please click [here](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=ncis&episode=s06e25). So spoiler alert!

**Chapter Seven: Gibbs**

[](https://i.imgur.com/L7lANDG.png)

Tony was already at his desk when Gibbs came in with two cups of coffee in his hands. He finished off the first cup, tossed it away, and started on the second, as he settled in behind his desk. Tony was typing away with both hands, no longer wearing the sling. Gibbs could see the cast peeking out from under Tony’s sleeve, a bright pink color now, instead of the boring plain one he’d had before. Ducky had shown Gibbs the note from the ER doctor, giving Tony the rest of the week off, because his arm had been re-broken and he’d been running around working with a broken arm for the better part of a week.

“The boy was in a significant amount of pain,” Ducky had told him, giving him that patented disappointed look of his. “And we failed him. _I_ failed him. I failed to stop you from taking him to Israel so soon after his injuries.”

“That was Vance.”

“And I failed to examine him again, just taking your word that he was fine,” Ducky continued, as if Gibbs hadn’t even spoken. “Because you told me he was fine, and I could feel your anger and disappointment towards him, I allowed him work in the field, even though he was supposed to be recovering from a broken arm. He was out chasing criminals down, even though he was supposed to be on desk duty. And I _let_ him do this, even though his arm had been broken again, Jethro,” Ducky snapped. “I failed him and _so did you._ ”

Gibbs didn’t have the heart to even argue with Ducky, nor did he mention the fact that Tony had said that Ziva had been the one to injure him again. Gibbs could imagine it, how Tony would have refused to defend himself, and just let Ziva take her anger out on him. Because Tony always carried around more than his fair share of guilt, a fact that Gibbs had been ignoring of late.

A fire still burned inside him. Because he had left Ziva behind in Tel Aviv, because despite everything she had done for him, he couldn’t trust her. Because she had jeopardized his team by forcing him to choose between her and DiNozzo. And because he had wanted so badly to choose her, even though he knew that she wasn’t truly loyal to him. He had almost chosen her, despite it all, because she was like a daughter to him. But in the end, she was not his daughter, because his daughter was long dead. And Ziva was an agent of Mossad, Eli’s instrument who had known what Michael was doing and had done nothing to either stop him, or tell Gibbs or Vance, or Tony, or _anyone_ else that he was responsible for killing the American agent.

“ _I am not sure we can work together_ ,” she had said to him on that tarmac, right before takeoff from Tel Aviv. Her huge brown eyes were solemn. So different than Kelly’s big blue eyes, but the expression in them was the same. _Please, Daddy, it wasn’t me who broke the lamp_ , Kelly’s voice echoed through his head. The same, solemn, beseeching look in her eyes as in Ziva’s. But both of them had been lying. Both of them had been trying to get their way, using their big eyes and their sad looks.

“ _Perhaps it is best if one of us gets transferred to another team._ ”

“ _Transferred?_ ”

“ _I need to be able to trust the people that I work with. I know you, more than anyone, understands that_ ,” it had sounded so final. The choice should have been easy. Tony was in the right, and Tony was always, _always_ , unfailingly loyal to Gibbs and someone who became a cop because he wanted to serve and protect. He loved the law and he wouldn’t have done something like this, kill a co-worker’s boyfriend, because of something as simple as jealousy. Tony just wasn’t wired that way.

So, with a heavy heart, Gibbs had chosen. Had been forced to choose. “ _Take care of yourself_ ,” he’d told her, as he kissed her cheek, wishing that he could just yank her onto the plane with him, and fuck Eli David and the horse he rode in on. But Eli David was Ziva’s father, and Ziva’s loyalties were torn. Yes. Gibbs did understand, more than anyone, the need to be able to trust the people that he worked with. And the truth was that it was Ziva that he couldn’t trust.

But even though he kept his expression calm, he’d ignored how heartbroken Tony had looked when he indicated that they were leaving without Ziva. And he’d ignored the real pain that he’d seen in Tony whenever the rough plane ride jostled him. No, he hadn’t ignored it. He’d _enjoyed_ it. Enjoyed seeing Tony in pain because Tony had been the catalyst that brought the building down on their heads.

He’d given Tony no breaks, either, once they got back. Instead of letting him ride the desk for at least a week or two, or even giving him a day off to sleep the whole thing off, he’d come back needing to put it all behind him and he’d forced Tony to work and had ridden him hard because he had chosen Tony. Or had he?

“ _Ah, so this is not about loyalty, it's about an unreasonable demand,_ ” Ducky had said, when he’d come to talk to him.

Had he actually chosen to punish Ziva because of her unreasonable demand? He was definitely punishing Tony now for what Ziva had done. All Tony had asked of him was for Gibbs to believe him, and he hadn’t actually told the man that he did.

Tony had looked like death warmed over in the past week, but he had never, not once, even complained. Because he thought he deserved whatever it was Gibbs was meting out. Not for the first time, Gibbs had to wonder about Tony’s childhood. The only people who took this level of punishment without breaking were those who had either been broken already, or those who never learned to value themselves. Gibbs wondered if Tony was a combination of both those things.

So yes, in light of the fact that Tony’s arm had somehow gotten broken again and he’d worked without complaint or medical treatment, Gibbs was now starting to feel guilty about how he had treated Tony throughout this whole thing. He hadn’t given Tony the kind of support the poor kid needed, and he’d left Tony to cope with Vance and Eli David’s machinations by himself, and he’d even blamed losing Ziva on him. Tony had been caught in the middle of some weird power struggle, and objectively, Gibbs could see that he was the only person who had been trying to do the right thing. The thing though, was that even now, knowing that he was being unreasonable, Gibbs was _still_ angry at him. He resented Tony for having to even make that choice, blamed him for it. Didn’t really want him around right now. But yet, he didn’t even let the man take a sick day to recover from his ordeal. That anger was still a rolling boil just beneath the surface, and Gibbs couldn’t help but scowl at Tony as he went about starting his day, as if Gibbs hadn’t been told by some stranger that Tony’s arm had needed to be re-set because Gibbs had been secretly enjoying every grimace of pain Tony had tried to hide over the course of the past week.

But this morning Tony looked different. Better rested, sure, but that wasn’t it, exactly. He was still pale and the new pink cast was a testament to the truth about his injuries. But Tony looked like he was humming under his breath. Tony looked like he was possibly even in a good mood.

Fuck it. Tony had his ‘I had sex last night’ look. How the hell the man was able to find a woman to fuck when his arm was in a hot pink cast, Gibbs didn’t know, but yeah, it was definitely Tony’s ‘I got laid last night’ look.

Gibbs was carefully watching Tony all morning, noting his careful and quiet interactions with McGee and his studious way of ignoring Gibbs, trying to make himself be less present somehow, as if that would make him escape Gibbs’ notice. He watched as Tony deflected attention away from himself when Ducky came to check on his arm, changing the subject deftly when Ducky tried to apologize for not insisting on Tony having a complete physical upon his return from Israel. Instead of Ducky giving him a tongue lashing for not coming to him because his arm continued to hurt, Gibbs watched as Tony engineered it so that Ducky ended up telling a long and convoluted story about bones and how scientists discovered that forensic anthropology could reveal what had happened to humans and animals, even for remains that were thousands of years old. And Tony just watched him, encouraging him with small questions and an interested noise here and there, keeping his eyes on the elderly gentleman, listening to him with his entire body. Even McGee had been drawn into this conversation, because Tony made it look as if it was a truly fascinating story. Not that Ducky’s stories weren’t sometimes fascinating, but the way Tony acted was what truly caught Gibbs’ eye this morning.

Gibbs had forgotten how good Tony was at manipulating people. And yet Tony never tried to manipulate Gibbs in that way, casually, and for his own benefit. Or did he? Gibbs wasn’t sure anymore. But he watched as Ducky walked back down to autopsy without giving his lecture to Tony or forcing him to come down with him to get another checkup.

And this whole entire time, Tony’s eyes hadn’t flicked over to Gibbs. Not even once. Tony was truly trying not to get Gibbs’ attention this morning, and Gibbs had to wonder if it was because he really didn’t want to get his ass pulled into fieldwork while his arm was so recently broken, or if it was because he was trying to pull the wool over Gibbs’ eyes about something. Gibbs was sure that Tony had told the truth about the whole thing with Rivkin, so what the hell was up with the man? And did it have anything to do with the fact that Tony had just had sex? Had Gibbs left Tony wide open so that someone could slide into his life and his bed while he was down? Had Gibbs’ treatment of him allowed Tony to be compromised?

Tony’s cell phone rang, and he answered with his usual cheerful, “Very Special Agent DiNozzo.” Then Gibbs watched as he blushed and turned away, hiding a small, shy smile. Not a smile that Gibbs was used to from Tony. It was soft and tender and _genuine_. “Hey Jane,” his tone was flirtatious, but not over the top flirty. The kind of flirty that he never heard from Tony. Genuine fondness and care kind of flirty instead of his usual tongue-in-cheek flirtatiousness that spilled over into everything, even his interactions and conversations with Gibbs.

And for whatever reason, the sincerity of his tone stuck in Gibbs’ craw and renewed his anger. Tony was happy now? One day off, a new cast for his arm, one lousy fuck and he was all happy again? The man was a simpleton! Ziva had made him choose this idiot instead of her?

“No, I’m fine,” Tony was speaking in hushed tones, although Gibbs’ sharp ears could pick out every word. “My arm is fine. My shoulder is fine. I’m good. OK? I don’t need the sling. Jane. Jane. _Jaaaane_ ,” he whined and ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah. Uh-huh. No. At my desk. No. No. Uh-huh. Please, god, no, Jane.” The one sided conversation hid more than it revealed, and that frustrated Gibbs. “Yes, Jane. Later. Uh-huh. Exactly right. Don’t bitch at me… No, forget I said anything. No, I don’t need the sling. I’m fine.”

Another couple minutes of quiet murmurs, so quiet that even Gibbs couldn’t hear any of the words, before Tony ended the call. He wasn’t smiling per se, when he looked at McGee (still carefully keeping his eyes away from Gibbs), but there was the hint of an upward slant to his lips and his eyes seemed to be smiling.

“New girlfriend, Tony?” McGee asked, his tone a little too heavy to just be friendly teasing. McGee had seemed to pick up on Gibbs’ anger at Tony and was also running with it, which had originally made Gibbs happy because it was always better when the team ganged up on each other. And now that Ziva wasn’t there to back him up, he needed McGee to help him smack Tony down whenever he felt like it.

“What?” Tony looked genuinely surprised. “No!” he laughed. “Jane’s not my girlfriend.”

“Sounded like it,” Gibbs growled.

McGee immediately looked back at his screen, eyes full of guilt, and Tony raised an eyebrow at Gibbs before he murmured an apology and went back to the cold case he was reviewing. Gibbs spent the rest of the morning watching Tony as he worked, and wondering if this Jane was the person Tony had sex with, and wondering what Tony meant when he said ‘Jane’s not my girlfriend’. Was it because his girlfriend was called something else? Or was it because he didn’t have a girlfriend, but he and this Jane had still fucked? Gibbs didn’t know and it didn’t look as if he would be able to intimidate the answer out of Tony. At least, not today.

But right around when McGee was dithering, about to ask for a lunch break, Gibbs watched as the elevator doors pinged and a man in a rumpled three piece suit sauntered into the bullpen. He was blond, with hair that looked prone to curls, unkempt in a way that many people tried to do with a lot of product and effort, but Gibbs could tell the man’s hair was unkempt because he hadn’t bothered to style it. His eyes were a bright blue, and looked all around the room curiously before he headed over to the bullpen.

“Anthony,” the man greeted Tony, who had his head down, hands on his forehead, shielding his eyes from the room as he was focused on something in the folder on his desk.

Tony’s head popped up, and he broke into a huge smile, eyes bright and happy. The smile was one that Gibbs had to admit he hadn’t seen in what seemed to be a very long time. The smile that, when directed towards Gibbs, always made him feel better about everything.

“Patrick,” he replied, pushing himself up to his feet.

Gibbs could see the lines of pain around Tony’s eyes. Whatever he had been on in the morning was wearing off and he was in pain again. Good. The simple minded idiot needed to be grounded by pain.

The visitor handed Tony a sling and the man sighed but wordlessly allowed this Patrick guy to fix the sling and get his injured arm settled. Patrick’s fingers brushed Tony’s arms lightly, humming softly in satisfaction when Tony was settled, but Gibbs could almost feel the care in his movements. This man cared about Tony and Tony was happy to see him. And Gibbs had absolutely no idea who he was, which made him bristle. He thought Tony had told him about all of the frat brothers that he’d been close to, and all of his other friends over the years. This Patrick was not on the list of people Gibbs had known about.

“Are you one of Tony’s frat buddies?” McGee piped up.

Patrick turned and gave the junior agent an amused smile. “Is that what you think?” Gibbs noticed that the man hadn’t actually answered McGee’s question.

“I don’t know, it’s why I’m asking,” McGee replied sullenly.

“You didn’t tell me you were in a fraternity, Anthony,” Patrick turned back to Tony, smiling inquiringly at him.

“I had to blend in some way in college,” he shrugged.

Patrick laughed, a musical, light hearted laugh. “Well played,” he acknowledged, and Tony’s answering smile was mischievous, as if the two were sharing some sort of inside joke. Again Gibbs had absolutely no idea what the joke was, and it irked him. And again, Patrick still hadn’t answered the question.

“So how do you know Tony, then?” McGee persisted, a la Ziva. The Mossad agent had really rubbed off on the junior agent, Gibbs thought, because this was exactly the line of questioning that she would have pursued. Ziva had been strangely possessive, as well as simultaneously dismissive of Tony, in a way that Gibbs had always thought would eventually lead to the two of them breaking rule twelve, if they hadn’t already. It was odd to see McGee behave in this way, although he had to admit that the little Elf Lord had been speaking to Tony in that same almost contemptuous air, although without quite the same amount of banter and outrageous flirtations that had characterized almost every interaction Tony and Ziva had had.

“I’m an old friend,” Patrick said casually, but Gibbs saw the way the man’s sharp eyes took in everything about Tony as well as the bullpen. His gaze rested briefly on Gibbs and he raised an eyebrow at him, but then his eyes moved on without any other reaction. Gibbs was used to people cringing somewhat at his death glare, which he was definitely directing towards the blond usurper. But it seemed to just bounce right off of the man, without affecting him in any way.

“That’s McGee,” Tony jerked his chin at the junior agent. “He’s my Probie.”

“Pleasure, I’m sure,” Patrick gave the junior agent a condescending smile, and Gibbs could practically see McGee’s hackles start rising. Usually Tony would do something to either defuse the situation or deflect it elsewhere, but this time he just allowed Patrick to do what he liked without any kind of intervention. Gibbs wondered what the hell was going on with Tony this morning.

“Why did security let you come up here without an escort?” McGee sounded suspicious now.

“I smiled,” Patrick smiled sunnily at him, “and I asked nicely. I said please and everything. Et voila!”

Tony let out a giggle that made him sound surprisingly young and perhaps even vulnerable, but he quickly turned it into a cough to hide his laughter, especially since McGee was now glaring at the both of them.

“Funny,” McGee pouted. “That’s what Tony says whenever I ask him why Gibbs hired him. Minus the asking nicely and the please part.”

“Well, then, you have your answer, don’t you?” Patrick said brightly.

Another giggle escaped Gibbs’ big bad Senior Field Agent, and Gibbs couldn’t help but see how much Tony now looked like a naughty little boy that had been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to do. The question was, what was causing this to happen?

“Anthony, do you think I could get a decent cup of tea around here?” Patrick turned back to Tony.

“The break room doesn’t have any of the lapsang souchong tea that you like,” Tony wrinkled his nose. “And I don’t believe Ducky favors it. Boss, I’m going to take my lunch now, hunt down some tea with Patrick, and will be back in an hour.”

“I thought you kept a box of lapsang souchong in your locked drawer that you drink when you’re not feeling well?” McGee asked.

Tony rolled his eyes and sighed, even though Patrick looked surprised, pleased, and perhaps even touched at that. Gibbs understood that Tony’d just wanted to get Patrick out of the office ASAP and McGee had foiled him.

“Silly me, I forgot,” he pursed his lips as he sat back down and unlocked his bottom drawer. Gibbs watched him pull a box of tea that had enough of a pungent smell that he could smell it all the way from his desk. He pulled two tea bags out of it and jerked his chin at McGee.

“I’m not making you tea,” McGee objected.

“My arm hurts, Probilicious,” Tony pouted, and the junior agent obediently walked over, got the tea bags and walked away towards the break room, even though he sighed heavily and stomped his feet.

Patrick gave Tony what looked to be a proud smile and Tony blushed a little at it. Whatever unspoken conversation was going on between the two, Gibbs didn’t have an in into it, and it bothered him. Because Tony had only ever really been that fluent in non-verbal speech with him. Now this Patrick guy was in the bullpen, upsetting the apple cart with his fancy tea and his tacit approval of Tony, and his obvious care and concern for the man. Gibbs waited until McGee came back with two mugs with a tea bag hanging out of each and put them both down on Tony’s desk. It looked like McGee wanted to slam them down but Patrick smiled so winningly at him that he placed both mugs down gently before he backed away.

“You need a couch, Anthony,” Patrick leaned casually against Tony’s desk, hitching a butt cheek on it, looking as casual as anything. He picked up the tea, dunking the tea bag in and out, looking around the bullpen. “It would fit right here,” he pointed to the area for the plasma, “if we pushed these desks aside somewhat.

“What kind of couch?” Tony asked.

“Old. Leather. Big enough for me to lie down, stretch out, snuggle myself in,” Patrick sighed dreamily.

“Just grab that chair over there, Patrick,” Tony pointed to Ziva’s chair, and gave McGee another pointed look. The junior agent scurried over and wheeled Ziva’s chair to Tony’s desk. “It has wheels and everything.”

“Ah, but I work best lying down,” Patrick lamented, before he gracefully sat on Ziva’s chair.

“Good thing you’re not here to work, then, huh?” Gibbs growled at him. “Who are you, again?”

Tony stared at Gibbs and he could see the green eyes widen with panic when he saw what was in Gibbs’ demeanor. That’s right, punk, Gibbs thought to himself. I’m definitely getting mad now.

“I’m Patrick,” Patrick said blithely. “We spoke on the phone yesterday, when you were trying to bully my Anthony here into coming to work when he had just had to have his arm re-broken, might I add, for the third fucking time in under two weeks, because someone had broken his arm a second time after it had first been broken. And afterwards, Anthony had been forced to work like a dog with his broken arm healing incorrectly. So, I think we should be clear on who we are. _I_ am Patrick, someone who actually gives a shit about Anthony, and you’re _Gibbs_ , the bastard boss who clearly doesn’t.” He kept his tone mild, and that annoyingly pleasant smile on his face, but Gibbs had never wanted to punch a man’s face in as much as he did at that moment. The casually possessive way in which the man had referred to Tony – yes, Gibbs had picked up on that “my Anthony” bit, thank you – was making the situation worse.

“Patrick,” Tony put a warning hand on Patrick’s forearm, but Patrick only tendered him a caring smile.

“We’re just chatting, aren’t we Agent Gibbs,” Patrick’s smile was pleasant when he turned back to Gibbs. He even winked at McGee, which made Gibbs snarl under his breath.

“How _did_ you get in here?” Gibbs demanded, standing up now.

“He hasn’t had caffeine in an hour,” Tony murmured to Patrick. “It makes him really grumpy.”

McGee nodded his agreement, and Gibbs almost detoured over to the junior agent to smack the back of his head for that.

“I’m a consultant for the CBI,” Patrick kept the smile on his face. “California Bureau of Investigation. I showed security my badge, went through the metal detectors and let them x-ray my wallet and keys and phone, and then they let me up here.”

Tony groaned under his breath, shaking his head slightly.

“Why are you here?” Gibbs growled, looming over Tony’s desk, knowing that this always made Tony cringe.

But Patrick showed no signs of being intimidated by Gibbs’ posturing. He rolled his eyes at Tony and his smile turned a little condescending. “I had some time off and decided to visit Anthony here in DC, but when I arrived his arm was hurting so much that he couldn’t even get to sleep,” he continued, in that annoyingly milquetoast tone of voice. “I had to take him to the ER and ensure he got some rest yesterday. So forgive me for coming to check in on him this fine afternoon, because he is still supposed to be resting at home. Where he does have an incredibly comfortable couch, and perhaps I could have done some work there on that comfortable couch instead of sitting here in these chairs that are most certainly not conducive to thinking. Anthony, please take these,” he handed Tony a bottle of aspirin. “You look like you’re in pain.”

Tony almost choked on his tea, but he coughed a few times, face turning red, before he swallowed what looked to be at least three pills from the bottle, chasing it down with a mouthful of that pungent tea. Patrick’s hand was on Tony’s back, rubbing it absently, while his eyes were fixed on Gibbs.

“CBI?” Gibbs was suddenly suspicious of this man’s motives. Was he here in connection to Mossad, or the dead agent, or did he know where the training camp might have moved in California? Was that why he was here? To pump Tony for information?

“Yep,” he popped the p in the word with gusto.

“I don’t know what you think you know or why you’re here, nosing around our cases…”

“I’m not here in regards to any of _your_ cases, Agent Gibbs,” oh yeah. Patrick was definitely condescending to him now. “I don’t actually give a flying fuck about your dead marines and naval officers. Or terrorists. Or any of that stuff. That is not my area of expertise.” He had the audacity to wrinkle his nose.

“What _is_ your area of expertise then?” Gibbs snarled.

“Serial killers,” Patrick said brightly.

“Profiler?” Gibbs’ tone was derisive.

“Ehhh,” Patrick wiggled his hand. “I suppose some might call me that, but I have a fairly narrow specialty.”

“What kind of specialty?” McGee asked. He’d come around his desk and was leaning against Tony’s now. Gibbs rolled his eyes at the junior agent. “Computers?”

“Oh god, no,” Patrick shuddered, his movements annoyingly graceful and delicate, even when he did that. He lifted the cup and sipped daintily at the foul smelling tea. “I let Agent Van Pelt do all that stuff. I just… look at things. I notice things, then put them together and solve crimes that way.”

“Hey, that’s kind of what Tony does, too!” McGee grinned at Tony who gave him a weak smile. “He has a knack for putting things together that don’t seem to fit, but he has like a sixth sense to make that leap that tends to tie the case up in a lovely knot.”

“Oh well done, Anthony,” Patrick bestowed another proud smile at Tony, and Gibbs had _never_ seen Tony blush and hide his face in that way.

“What kinds of things do you notice?” McGee asked.

“Oh, god. Don’t do it, Patrick,” Tony whined. “Please, please don’t. I have to work here.”

“Do you?” Patrick asked him gently, before turning to McGee, letting his eyes run over the younger man. “Hmmm. Let’s see. Start with the easy stuff. You spend much too much time in front of a screen, not just at work but you get too little sleep. Bags under your eyes. Pasty skin. Not enough sun. Video games – MMORPGs, would be my guess, given the way you handle your mouse and that you seem to mutter to yourself while you work, as if you were still speaking into a headset. You probably snack while you’re up to your games. Nothing healthy. Something classic though. Mm… not chocolate. Something with peanut butter, perhaps? You have that look about you. You smell of pipe tobacco but I don’t know if you actually inhale, even though you do have a pipe. You want to think that you’re a modern day Sherlock Holmes, and you write… crime novels, is it? Probably something that barely disguises the work that you do here, and the characters are based on everyone you work with. Yourself as the protagonist, of course. You’re highly educated, went to the best schools, and proud of it. Trying to impress someone. Your father? Yeah, definitely daddy issues. So, let’s see, overbearing father of some kind of military background who made you want to follow in his footsteps but not quite. So you decided to join NCIS, it’s kind of an adjunct to the military. Oh, your father is probably US Navy or a Marine, then since you’re NCIS. Probably Navy, would be my guess. A Marine’s kid would probably have outright rebelled and gone into the private sector. How far off base am I?”

McGee looked stunned.

“Spot on,” Tony murmured.

“Did you research me? Look at my file?” McGee asked, sounding a little hysterical.

“Please,” Patrick scoffed at that. “I told you I notice things.” He gave Gibbs a pointed look before he smugly sipped his tea.

“You’re going to get your face punched in if you keep doing that,” Gibbs threatened him.

Patrick smiled. “Would you like me to do you next?”

Gibbs was about to pounce on the man when the elevator dinged again and two people came off, looked towards them, and strode purposefully over.

“Jane!” the woman exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips.

“Lisbon, Cho,” Patrick greeted them affably. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“We have a situation and we need to go,” she told him.

Jane? Gibbs wondered. Wasn’t that the name Tony had said when he had been genuinely flirting on the phone earlier that morning?

Patrick raised an eyebrow at her.

“It’s a credible threat against you,” the Asian man accompanying the woman asserted. “We can’t ignore it and you can’t just run around without a protective detail. At least for a while.”

Both of them had badges on their belts, both were wearing suits and both were armed, Gibbs could see the tell-tale bulges where they were carrying. “Time to go,” the woman nodded to them and started to turn away.

“Not without Anthony,” Patrick’s voice made both of them turn back around.


	8. Patrick

**Chapter Eight: Patrick**

[](https://i.imgur.com/FBYuhBG.png)

_“Not without Anthony,” Patrick stated clearly, making no move to get up from the truly uncomfortable chair_.

“What?” Lisbon asked.

“Anthony,” Patrick smiled at Tony, who blushed oh so charmingly. “I’m afraid I’ve rather made him a target, too. I was trying to avoid that, but he was already a lesser target, based on his past involvement with Angela and myself. But we’ve definitely escalated, and there’s no way Red John won’t come after him.”

“I _can_ take care of myself, Patrick,” Tony argued, and he that look in his eyes that made Patrick worry about him. “Go with your team and let them protect you. I’m a big boy now. I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t think for a minute that this is just a normal threat,” Patrick frowned at him.

“I’m actually a pretty competent agent, you know,” Anthony told him, dimples deepening as he grinned a cocky grin at him. “Won’t be the first time I’m in the line of fire, or play the bait.”

“Not like this,” Patrick shook his head. “No. Not when you’re already hiding knives in strategic places in your apartment, fortifying it as if you’re waiting for something bad to happen, without even throwing Red John in the mix.”

“ _Red John_?” McGee asked, sounding excited. “The serial killer Red John? I’ve read about him! Oh my god! Are you Patrick Jane? The psychic? Is that how you knew all those things about me?”

“There are no such things as psychics,” Patrick told McGee before turning back to Anthony. “I’m not leaving you here, not when you’re being forced to work when you were injured because of some sinister terrorist plot, and then thrown to the Mossad wolves by your own agency. They _didn’t_ even know that someone had broken your arm _again_ by them doing that. So no. I can’t trust them to have your back.”

Gibbs was starting to sputter at this point but Patrick paid him no heed.

“Ummm,” Anthony chewed on his lips, which, as it had when he was a teenager, made his dimples wink in and out. It was still adorable, almost twenty years later. “How’d you know about the um, terrorist thing?”

“You’re pretty chatty when you’re high on codeine, sweetling,” Patrick chuckled. Anthony had even fixated on his fingers, for some reason. It had been highly amusing. It wasn’t even that Patrick was trying to get information out of him, but he’d just been so incredibly talkative, telling Patrick all kinds of things without being prompted. A lot of it made absolutely no sense, so Patrick had been ready to take the whole terrorist plot and killing the boyfriend of his co-worker as a possible drug induced hallucination, but apparently it wasn’t.

“Oh, right,” Anthony blushed again. God, he really was adorable. “Sorry. That’s classified. I shouldn’t have said anything about it.”

“I’m a CBI consultant now,” Patrick grinned at him. “I’ve changed my ways. I’m not the same asshole you knew and loved.”

Anthony snorted at that.

“But I think my point still stands.”

Anthony shrugged, “They’re not so bad,” he gave Gibbs and McGee a tentative smile.

“But will they come when you call? Will they believe you when you say you need them? Will they really watch out for you, defend you? Because Red John has a long reach, and has people everywhere.”

“Hey! We watch each other’s sixes!” McGee objected, although tellingly, Patrick noticed that Gibbs said nothing.

Anthony looked skeptical, and Patrick couldn’t quite tell whether he was skeptical about his co-workers looking out for him, or about Red John’s reach.

“Nobody from here called you yesterday after they learned you were out with a broken arm that had been re-broken,” Patrick knew that he was hurting Anthony with these words, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t just let Anthony go alone into this new world where Red John would be stalking him. “I know _you_ love your job and you love your team, but do _they_ love you back, Anthony?”

“I don’t know if they do or if they don’t, but I don’t know if _you_ do, either!” Anthony pulled his arm away from Patrick.

“So what are you going to do then? Go it alone? Beef up the protections you’ve already set up in your apartment? Start wiring your apartment with explosives? Because guns and knives hidden away in strategic places isn’t going to be enough!” Patrick thundered, standing up angrily. “What kind of life is _that_ , Anthony?”

“I’m not a child anymore, Patrick,” Anthony stood and they faced off. “You can’t tell me what to do! I’m not some dumb kid that can easily be manipulated anymore.”

“I _never_ manipulated you.” It surprised Patrick how much it hurt to think that his Anthony thought that. “I always let you be who you were, and let you do things your way!”

“I know you didn’t,” Anthony was conciliatory now.

“ _Do_ you know this? I’m not sure you do. Because if I did, if I’d wanted to change who you were by manipulating you into doing my bidding at all times, make you a fucking zombie follower instead of that beautiful, independent, unique person that you keep hiding from the world, then yes, I could have done that. Don’t you think I could have said something to make you stay with us when you said you were going to college instead of coming with Angela and me?” Patrick couldn’t help the words now.

“I _know_ you didn’t manipulate me,” Anthony yelled at him. “I know it. I just don’t know if you still love me now or if this is just some goddamned guilt trip twenty fucking years too late! I’m not going anywhere with you if this is just a case of misplaced guilt! I wasn’t there for Angela and Charlotte, I know, and I’ll regret that forever. But I’m not just going to sit here all helpless while Red John comes for me. I’m under no illusion that he doesn’t already know about me so we both know he’s coming. But you know what? I can defend myself. I can help you take him down!”

Both Patrick and Anthony were breathing hard now. “It’s not guilt, Anthony,” Patrick knew he was begging now, and he ignored the shocked looks from Lisbon and Cho, and Anthony’s team, and everyone else in the squad room. “It’s not. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

“ _You_ didn’t let me come back!” Anthony wailed. “ _You_ made me stay away!”

“I _know_ , sweetling,” all the anger subsided, and Patrick was left with just deep regret now. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

“I won’t survive you tossing me aside a second time,” Anthony’s words hit Patrick as if they were physical.

“Never again, Anthony. I promise, I won’t ever let you go, as long as you’ll have me.”

Anthony’s eyes had filled with tears and he angrily swiped it away with the back of his hand. “I suppose now Red John will definitely know who I am,” he grumbled, looking around at the people all rubbernecking.

“Not to mention everyone in your building,” Cho quipped.

Anthony started laughing then, and it wasn’t the good kind of laughter. He shook his head and swiped at his eyes again. “The fuck is my life,” he whined.

“Wait, did Patrick just call Tony ‘sweetie’?” out of nowhere, a black-haired goth girl with a husky voice asked, hand raised as if she was asking a question in a classroom.

“No, my dear, I called him ‘sweetling’,” Patrick corrected her.

Anthony rolled his eyes. “Can we just not go there?” he snapped. “In fact, let’s take this to a conference room so you and I can talk about what the fuck you think you’re doing, fucking with my life now.”

“I’m not trying to fuck with your life, Anthony,” Patrick sighed, but he allowed himself to be herded away. Lisbon, Cho, Gibbs, McGee and the goth girl were all trailing after them and Patrick made no move to stop them.

“I’d rather fight another Kidon member than have this discussion right now,” Anthony muttered to himself. “I should’ve just let Ziva shoot me in Israel and get it over with.”

“ _What_?” the goth girl yelled. “Ziva threatened to kill you? What the hell _happened_ while you were in Israel?”

“Nothing,” Anthony gave her a wry look. “Nothing important,” he glared at Gibbs then.

“Nothing other than someone breaking Tony’s arm again,” Patrick told the goth girl.

“What?” she was outraged. “Who did that to our Tony?”

“I would guess, this Ziva person?” Patrick shrugged.

“That’s enough,” Anthony growled at him, although his hand on the small of Patrick’s back was still gentle.

“I’m Abby, by the way. Abby Sciuto,” the goth girl held out her hand, and Patrick turned and shook it as they walked, tendering her a smile.

“Patrick Jane,” he introduced himself. “That’s Agents Lisbon and Cho of the CBI,” he pointed to his team.

Anthony nodded politely to them. By the time they were behind closed doors in the unbelievably orange interior of the building, everyone had introduced themselves. Anthony breathed a sigh of relief when they were away from the prying eyes of the rest of the building.

“This should be a private conversation, between Patrick and me,” he tried, opening the door, hoping it would be enough to get everyone else to leave.

“We need to protect Jane,” Lisbon informed him. “We’re not going anywhere without him.”

“And I’m not going anywhere without you, Anthony,” Patrick winked at him.

Anthony looked around and saw that no one was going to leave, so he blew out a long breath and shut the door. Everyone took a seat at the conference table, Patrick ensuring that he sat next to Anthony.

“What’s this credible threat?” Anthony turned to Lisbon.

Lisbon sighed. “This isn’t in your jurisdiction,” she pursed her lips together.

“I’m not trying to steal your case,” Anthony rolled his eyes.

“I don’t understand why you’re even involved,” Lisbon said reasonably.

“Wait, is Tony _gay_?” McGee asked, yelping when Abby smacked the back of his head with a hissed “ _McGee_!”

“Labels mean nothing, McPoliticallyIncorrect,” Anthony sniped back. “But if you must label me, I prefer pansexual.”

“So you’re attracted to men, too?” McGee asked.

“Pretty much anything on two legs,” Anthony tossed off casually.

McGee made a shocked noise in his throat.

“Except for you. I’m not attracted to _you_ , McGayPanic. Don’t worry,” Anthony rolled his eyes again. “Now if we can get back to the discussion at hand.”

“Anthony, Angela and I were in a committed relationship, many years ago,” Patrick decided to just out them all. Anthony barely suppressed a groan and rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“What, like a threesome?” Lisbon asked.

“Kinky,” Cho added.

“No. We loved each other,” Patrick corrected her.

“Well, there was _some_ kinkiness,” Anthony grinned naughtily at Cho. “But it was more than just that.”

“We loved each other equally. And we all three wanted to be together for the rest of our lives.”

“Polyamory,” Abby nodded sagely.

“What can we say, we were ahead of the curve,” Anthony smiled at her, and they fist bumped. Patrick noted that Anthony was fond of this girl and he smiled at her, too. “We were supposed to all run away together after I graduated high school. We had to wait until after the summer I graduated high school, after I turned eighteen, so I couldn’t just be labeled an underaged runaway and get us all in trouble. But my father sent me to military school senior year, and I ended up getting an athletic scholarship to OSU and decided I wanted to go to college first.”

“That’s wise,” Cho agreed.

“I thought so,” Anthony sighed.

“But I was an asshole and pretty much told him never to darken our doorway again,” Patrick said ruefully.

“You’re still an asshole and a dramatic son of a bitch,” Anthony grumbled, but he didn’t object when Patrick laced their fingers together.

“I definitely agree with that,” Lisbon chimed in, which made Anthony grin at her.

“It’s the showman in him,” Tony commented to her.

She nodded sagely.

“I wanted to come to you after Angela and Charlotte died,” Patrick leaned closer to him, murmuring the words softly, even though he knew everyone could hear him. These words were for Anthony alone. “I wanted to make sure you were OK. I wanted to hold you again. I should’ve called you years before Red John happened to us. I wanted you back, but I was too arrogant.”

“It’s not like DiNozzo here was saving himself, waiting for you,” Gibbs tone was droll. “He wasn’t lonely and pining.”

“I don’t care about that,” Patrick told him impatiently. “Those people meant nothing. Irrelevant to this discussion.”

“ _We were on a break_ ,” Anthony murmured, and then he, Abby and of all people Cho started laughing.

“I’m not sure whether you’re Rachel or Ross,” Cho looked at Anthony, dark eyes thoughtful.

“Oh, I’m _way_ prettier than Patrick,” Anthony told him. “I’m Rachel. Of course.”

“Angela always did think that you were the prettiest one,” Patrick smiled at him.

“Sap,” Anthony rolled his eyes.

Cho and Lisbon both grunted their agreement.

“So other than that blowout out on the floor, and this sordid back history that you two share, why else would Red John want to target Agent DiNozzo?” Lisbon asked.

“It’s not sordid,” Anthony sounded sad. “It was the best time of my life.”

“Who’s the sap now,” Cho murmured.

“I believe he was already a target,” Patrick sobered up now. This was serious business. “For that Grassley case, we were looking at flight manifests going back to… to when Red John murdered my wife and my daughter. Anthony’s name was on one of them. About a week after the funerals.”

“You came to Sacramento?” Cho asked.

Anthony nodded.

“Did you poke around?” Lisbon demanded.

“ _Of course_ ,” Anthony was affronted. “I’m a fucking federal agent. The love of my life had just been murdered, along with…” he broke off, not wanting to mention Charlotte again. “I wasn’t going to just let it go.”

Patrick tightened his hold on Anthony’s hand. “I’m sorry I left you alone for so long.”

“I know.”

“So he could’ve gotten on Red John’s radar as far back as that?” Lisbon said, her tone thoughtful.

“I thought he was safe, far away from us,” Patrick sighed. “I was wrong.”

“So you decided to come out here and look him up?” Lisbon demanded.

“He was on that flight manifest,” Patrick said softly. “I needed to know that Anthony was OK. And I needed to warn him. I tried to do this surreptitiously.”

“Well _that_ worked out well,” Lisbon groused.

“I had to take him to the ER. He was hurt and running a fever. I was worried it would be some kind of infection. They had to re-break his arm to set it correctly. It was ugly. So we had to be seen in public together,” Patrick sighed.

“Plus we went out on a date last night,” Anthony smiled sweetly at Patrick, and he soaked up his joy at remembering the good time they’d had.

“In public?” Cho asked.

“Yup,” Anthony nodded. “There may even have been some public indecency in a parking lot,” he winked at Abby, who clapped her hands and cheered.

“You’re such a pig, Tony,” McGee complained.

“It’s so romantic,” Abby sighed at the same time.

Patrick laughed in surprise.

Cho’s phone rang and he answered, murmuring softly before he whispered in Lisbon’s ear. Lisbon sighed.

“The threat may have been escalated,” she told the group.

“You should take Patrick and keep him secure then,” Anthony was decisive. God, how he’d gotten hotter as he’d gotten older Patrick didn’t know, but he had. That decisiveness made his dick twitch in his pants. “I have cold cases to get back to.”

“Van Pelt said pictures were sent this time,” Lisbon said grimly.

“Pictures of you and Anthony on your date last night,” Cho added. “At a fair of some sort?”

Patrick sighed, arousal killed by that. Red John had pictures of Anthony. Red John was taunting him. “Anthony,” he turned to his beloved. “I beg you to please come with me. Let Lisbon and Cho and my team take care of this threat first, before we figure out what to do for the future. For our future.”

“I can take care of myself,” Anthony’s chin was set. Patrick recognized that stubbornness was setting in. He had that look in his eye that made Patrick doubt if even he could convince Anthony to come with him. Or to do anything he didn’t want to do.

“I don’t doubt that,” Patrick really didn’t. Anthony had chosen his path a long time ago, and it had been the right choice, obviously. He didn’t want to change the man. He just wanted to be with him again.

“I’ll be fine.”

Well. That was how it was going to be, then. Anthony was going to be difficult, so Patrick would have to be the one to stay instead of asking Anthony to leave. Besides, Patrick was only a consultant at the CBI. He didn’t even get paid. He could stay with Anthony in DC and trust that Anthony’s team was as behind him as they claimed to be. But he wasn’t leaving Anthony here alone, after all this.

“This Red John seems to have you all in a tizzy,” Gibbs drawled, sitting all relaxed in his chair.

Patrick glared at him.

“Our mistake was to underestimate him,” Lisbon was serious now, fixing Gibbs with her ‘I shit you not’ stare. “We don’t do that anymore.”

“He’s killed so many people, Boss,” Abby sounded a little breathless. Was she a ghoul? A Red John fan? “The forensics of the Red John murders are incredibly sparse. It’s quite a mystery.” No. Just a scientist who wanted to solve the crimes.

Patrick turned and frowned at Gibbs. It surprised Patrick that he remained unconcerned about the fact that Anthony, his teammate, had had his life threatened by a serial killer. “Why don’t you care that Anthony is in danger?” he asked Gibbs. Was he, like Hardy, a co-conspirator? How long was Red John’s reach? He scrutinized Gibbs, trying to see further into his soul.

“He’s a federal agent. His life is always on the line. This is nothing new. We serve and protect,” Gibbs shrugged.

“Then why don’t you care to serve and protect a teammate whose life has been threatened?” Lisbon’s thoughtful gaze was on Gibbs as well now. She and Cho exchanged a glance, and Patrick knew that they were wondering, too, if this was another Hardy situation.

“We’re a family here,” Abby glared at Cho and Lisbon. “Of course Gibbs will protect Tony. He’s _always_ done that.”

“Then why didn’t he take Anthony off field work after they came back from Israel?” Patrick chimed in. “Why didn’t he insist that Anthony ride the desk until his arm was better? Why didn’t any of you notice that he was in real pain? Or did you notice but not care?” Patrick’s eyes were on Gibbs the entire time. “You _did_ notice,” he saw the micro expression crossing Gibbs’ face. “And you _did_ care, but _you liked_ that he was hurt and that he was working hurt.”

“No way!” Abby objected, although she faltered when she saw Gibbs’ expression. Apparently, the goth girl was pretty good at reading her boss. “What? Gibbs?”

The silver haired agent just grunted noncommittally, but the betrayed look in Anthony’s eyes was too much for Patrick. He wasn’t going to just launch into breaking Gibbs down in front of witnesses, but Anthony loved this man, respected him, and he’d gone and deliberately ignored the fact that Anthony was hurt, and had exacerbated the situation.

“You’ve suffered great loss, Gibbs,” Patrick kept his tone soft but spoke clearly. “But…”

Anthony grabbed his arm and shook his head. “Don’t, Patrick. Don’t do this.”

“He can’t just keep fucking you over.”

“He’s not. Right, Boss?” Anthony looked wildly at Gibbs and the older man just grunted. He wasn’t at all penitent. “What the hell is _wrong_ with you?” Anthony suddenly lost his own cool. “Why the hell are you punishing me then?”

“Because _I chose you_.”

“In Baltimore?” Tony asked, frowning.

“In Tel Aviv. I chose you.”

“Over Ziva?” Tony flinched at that.

“She made me choose. On the tarmac. She said she couldn’t work with people she didn’t trust, and forced my hand. I chose you.”

“And then you decided it was the wrong choice? Before you realized this was a game of no takebacksies?”

“You’re letting Patrick here try to do an end run around his game of no takebacksies,” Gibbs crossed his arms.

“He doesn’t want me back,” Anthony brushed it off casually, which surprised Patrick. Of course he wanted Anthony back. He always had, ever since he and Angela first met him. But apparently, Anthony truly believed that Patrick didn’t want him back. “But he’s still trying to protect me. And he’s worried that you’re not going to care that someone with the kind of body count like Red John has me in their sights. You’re just going to wait this out and send me out in the field before I’m all healed again. And if Red John takes me out, then whoop de doo. Your problems are solved? You can call your precious Ziva and tell her to come back? You’ve made a different choice? Or better yet, someone _else_ forced your hand again?”

Abby was crying now, big fat tears and mascara running down her face. “Oh my god,” she kept muttering to herself. McGee had his arms around her, his eyes wide, face pale, as the scene unfolded.

“I shouldn’t have had to choose,” Gibbs growled.

“Well, _I_ didn’t make you choose!”

“ _You_ put us in this position!” Gibbs bellowed at him and Anthony reacted as if Gibbs had physically assaulted him.

“Let’s all just calm the fuck down,” Lisbon’s tone was firm.

“The fact that you think Anthony was at fault for fighting for his life against a terror suspect tells me everything I need to know about you,” Patrick couldn’t stop himself now, ignoring the disappointed growl from Lisbon. He didn’t want to hurt Anthony anymore, but his situation at NCIS was untenable now. There was absolutely no way Patrick would leave without Anthony, and no way he was allowing Anthony to stay. He raked his eyes over the man, seeing everything that he was trying to hide. “You think that you’ve cornered the market on grief? You think your losses trump everybody else’s? Let’s see… you’re a marine. First Gulf War, by the looks of it. And hmm… your wife died, while you were deployed. Am I right?”

Gibbs blanched at that.

“I’m right,” Patrick’s eyes were focused on Gibbs now. As if Gibbs was his prey. “Not just your wife. A child too?” he nodded, given Gibbs’ reaction to that. “OK. So you think that because your wife and child died – oh wait, murdered?” Patrick’s smile was cruel now. “A murdered wife and child while you were deployed,” he gloated. “You think you know what grief is. And guilt. And even… retribution. You’ve killed whoever murdered your family,” Patrick was on a roll now.

“ _What_?” Abby turned to Gibbs. “What? No! Gibbs?”

“Vengeance was yours, and still, it didn’t give you what you thought it would, did it?” Patrick continued. “So now you run around acting like a fucking despot. And you expect complete obedience, and you’ve forgotten the chain of command. And you’ve forgotten how to be loyal and to care for those who are loyal to you. You think because your wife and child died, that you can be a bastard to whomever you please. But here’s the thing. You’re a fucking bastard, using your loss as a weapon against those who aren’t mindlessly doing your bidding. Anthony’s lost people too. His mother. Angela. Charlotte. He’s lost a wife and a daughter too but you’re too self-involved to have even realized that, have you?”

“You took emergency family leave six years ago,” Abby gasped, staring at Anthony. “You left for a couple weeks. We didn’t know what was going on. Ducky thought maybe you had a frat get together and didn’t want to tell us the truth. You were completely out of it for weeks and weeks after you got back.”

“He was in Sacramento trying to find me, and figure out what the hell happened to our girls,” Patrick said gravely. “We never got closure for our loss. But Anthony never took out his grief and his anger on anyone else. He just sat down and blamed himself for everything. Even though _I_ was the one who brought Red John into our lives.”

Anthony clutched at Patrick’s hand now.

“Even though I was an asshole, over the years, Anthony and Angela continued to be close. They had a real relationship,” Patrick went on. “Anthony lost a wife and daughter too. But unlike you, who thinks your grief makes everything else completely unimportant, he decided to go on with his life. To continue to protect and serve. You? You joined NCIS because you were no good as a marine anymore, you’d done what you could but vengeance didn’t actually make a difference, did it? They’re still dead. Your wife. Your daughter. Charlotte. Angela. They are still dead and we can’t bring them back. You haven’t gone on with your life. You’re stuck. But you’re too much of a coward to actually eat your gun, no matter how many times you’ve attempted it.”

“Unlike you, Anthony doesn’t need to tear people down to make himself feel better. He doesn’t need to be anything other than himself in order to make the world a better place. All you do is destroy,” Patrick glared at Gibbs. “Are you happy now? Now that you’ve betrayed Anthony? And the rest of your team?” Patrick turned to Lisbon. “He’s not one of Red John’s. He’s fueled by his own brand of insanity.”

Gibbs roared angrily and slammed his hands on the table, making Anthony jump in his seat.

“We should definitely not leave Anthony to this yahoo,” Patrick smiled bitterly at Lisbon. “He won’t be safe.”

“You’re not taking DiNozzo anywhere!” Gibbs yelled. “He’s _mine_ , asshole.”

Patrick just laughed. Seriously. The nerve of the man.

“You think you can just waltz back in here and claim DiNozzo was yours before he was mine? First come first served?” Gibbs snarled. “Well think again. He’s mine and you can’t have him. Vance can’t have him. Mossad can’t have him. He. Is. Mine.”

“To beat up as you please? To be your whipping boy?” Patrick asked, keeping his tone pleasant. “Newsflash, Gibbs. Anthony isn’t yours. And the thing is, he isn’t mine either. He’s his own person. That is the thing that I didn’t quite understand all those years ago, when he wanted to do something that was his own and not anybody else’s. But I was eighteen at the time, so I think you can at least make the argument that I was still a child and I didn’t really see what Anthony needed at the time. But you? You think he’s yours? You’re not eighteen and you don’t give a shit about him. Not really. You only care about what he can do for you.”

Anthony drew in a sharp breath at that and he stared at Gibbs. There was a long and uncomfortable pause.

“You’re mine to do with as I please, DiNozzo,” Gibbs told Anthony.

“Am I?” Anthony’s eyes were tear filled again. “I see that that’s what you think.”

“What else is there?” Gibbs smirked. “You’re a masochist. You _like_ it when I use you. When I hurt you.”

Anthony gasped at that. After a moment he turned to Patrick. “You’re right. He’s definitely got his own brand of crazy.”

Patrick couldn’t help but snort with laughter at that, and Anthony smiled too, even though Patrick could see a profound sadness in him now. Anthony took a deep breath.

“I can see that coming in to work when I was supposed to be on medical leave was a mistake,” he sounded formal. “I think I really need to go home and take some of my stronger medication. I’ll be out for the rest of the week, per the advice of my doctor,” he continued. “And after that, I’m going to take some time off, think about things. Ziva was right to be concerned with working with people she didn’t trust. That’s definitely what I’ll be thinking about. Besides, I have way too much accrued leave time so HR will be pleased with that.”

“You’re not quitting, are you?” Abby wailed. “Oh god, Tony. You can’t leave us. Not when there’s a serial killer out to get you.”

“Won’t be the first time, will it?” Anthony gave her a gentle smile. “Remember Jeffrey White?”

“You voluntarily shackled yourself to him!” Abby lamented.

“At least I’m not voluntarily shackling myself to anyone this time,” Anthony shrugged. “I’m not quitting…” the ‘yet’ there was clear even though it was unspoken. “I’m just going to take some time off and think things through.”

“But you can’t go alone!” McGee objected. “If there’s a credible threat, and you’re now a target of Red John’s…”

“I’m going to hang out with the CBI until they neutralize this threat,” Anthony raised his eyebrows at Lisbon and Cho, silently questioning them.

“Of course,” Lisbon nodded.

“I hear there’s a comfortable couch in the office I can make into a second home while we figure this out,” Anthony’s grin was shaky.

“You’ll have to fight Jane for that couch,” Lisbon shrugged.

“I’ll share,” Patrick smiled at him. “I’ll share whatever I have with Anthony.”

“Oh, _ew_ ,” Lisbon rolled her eyes. “For the love of god, Jane. You both better keep it in your pants on that couch.”

“You’re right. You do have an office with a door that closes that we can use instead,” Patrick gave her a mischievous smirk. “Thanks for the offer, Lisbon.”

“Don’t make me regret this, Jane.”

They stood, and even though Anthony’s bottom lip was trembling, he took the hand Patrick held out to him. Abby and McGee hugged Anthony, hugs that he returned, but he kept his eyes off Gibbs. Patrick took a long look at Gibbs, holding his gaze for a long moment before they left.


	9. Epilogue

**Epilogue: Patrick**

[](https://i.imgur.com/L7lANDG.png)

It was a simple feat to take a short side trip by himself. A small detour before he met up with Cho, Lisbon and Anthony at the airport. He had the taxi wait for him, and he walked up the driveway and knocked.

“It’s open!” he heard a gruff voice call from within.

Patrick opened the door and walked in. Gibbs was standing in the foyer, dressed in jeans and a hoodie that had USMC emblazoned on the front, hands in his pockets.

“What do you want?” Gibbs asked.

“Thank you,” Patrick told him. “For letting him go.”

Gibbs grunted and made a face.

“I know you said those things to hurt him and make him leave with me. And I know you did that because even though you’re angry at him, you do still care about him. And you know that what you were doing to him was wrong.”

Gibbs shrugged.

“I wanted to tell you I know that. And I appreciate you doing what’s right for Anthony today. Even though it was ugly.”

“Take care of him.”

“Red John will have to go through me to get to him. I promise you that.”

Gibbs nodded.

“When Anthony stops flinching away from what happened, he’ll figure out what you did today, he’ll want to come back and talk to you.”

“I know.”

Patrick smiled and Gibbs’ lips quirked up in return. “Thank you,” Patrick nodded, starting to turn away.

“He’s a good kid,” Gibbs’ words stopped him. “Don’t waste good. Use him. Bring Red John down with his help. Don’t underestimate what he brings to the table. He’s the best young agent I’ve ever worked with. I don’t know why I forgot that for a while.”

“He’s always been good at blending in,” Patrick agreed.

“I know you love him and you don’t want to put him in harm’s way, but if you try to keep him away from the action, he’ll sneak off and do things without your knowledge,” Gibbs continued. “It’ll be better if you work together. It’s how you’ll get Red John.”

Patrick nodded, seeing Gibbs’ point. He didn’t know if he would be able to do that, but he thought maybe he could try. “How long ago did they die?” he blurted out, and that wasn’t even planned. How long would the pain of loss be with him, he wanted to know. That was the real question.

Gibbs understood the question without further explanation. “My wife and daughter were killed around the time you and DiNozzo were together, with your wife.”

“When does it stop hurting?”

“Never,” Gibbs said. “But you didn’t lose everything. I did. You have DiNozzo now. Don’t waste this second chance.”

Patrick nodded. “I won’t.”

“But if you hurt him…”

“I know,” Patrick smiled at him again.

“It didn’t solve anything, killing Hernandez,” Gibbs murmured. “It wasn’t closure. Shannon and Kelly didn’t magically come back to life. My heart didn’t stop being broken.”

“Up until a few weeks ago, all I wanted was Red John’s head on a plate. I’m only helping CBI because I want to catch him.”

“And kill him?”

Patrick nodded.

“Whatever the cost?”

Patrick nodded again.

“What happened?” Gibbs sounded curious now. “What changed?”

“I wasn’t willing to lose Lisbon to get him,” Patrick shrugged. “I don’t think I can stand to lose anyone else to him. Not even if I get to kill him.”

“Tony’s not a price you’re willing to pay?”

“No. Never,” Patrick shook his head.

“He’s a stickler for the law, that one,” Gibbs grinned. “He’ll want to arrest the guy and take him to jail.”

Patrick nodded. “I know.”

“But if Red John tries anything, resists arrest, Tony’ll also be the first to put a bullet in his brain to stop anyone else from being hurt,” Gibbs was matter of fact.

“Good to know.”

They stood and stared at each other for a moment, and Patrick felt like he understood this man now. “I apologize for the fuss at the office.”

Gibbs brushed it away. “No more than the usual hysterics,” he muttered.

“I know you’re skeptical of the whole Red John network,” Patrick ignored the snort Gibbs gave. “And I don’t think you’re under anyone’s control but your own. But I couldn’t help but wonder, this whole thing with Mossad… Are you sure you know who’s moving the chess pieces?”

Gibbs frowned at him.

“I’m not saying Red John has control of Mossad,” Patrick shook his head. “But I have to ask myself if he’s known who Anthony was all these years, and he’s been doing things behind the scenes, trying to engineer something. Fucking with your team because Anthony is on it. Maybe all he needs to do is whisper in a few ears, and things get complicated for you.”

Gibbs’ frown deepened, but it looked like he was listening. “I don’t know what Vance or Eli David want,” he said slowly. “Eli David is definitely hinky, and I don’t know if I can trust Vance.”

“Then perhaps you should find out.”

Gibbs nodded. “Let me know if you need anything.”

Patrick smiled and nodded. Then he held out his hand, and Gibbs took it, shaking it firmly. “Good handshake. Good eye contact. I can see why Anthony stayed with you so long.”

“Get out of here,” Gibbs rolled his eyes. “And take care of him.”

“I will,” Patrick promised him, before he left.

The taxi took him to the airport where Lisbon and Cho were stressing about his whereabouts. On the plane, he and Anthony were snuggled together, and he gave Anthony one of his codeine pills, so the man was asleep and drooling onto his vest, face buried in his shoulder the entire long flight, long fingers clutching at Patrick’s shirt. Long fingers that appeared to be wearing the wedding ring again. He might have the ring on now, but Patrick still felt as if Anthony still didn’t know if he would take a chance on Patrick. They would have to speak, soon, to address this view Anthony had that Patrick didn’t want him back or thought him in any way expendable. He would have to earn Anthony’s trust again, because he knew that he’d hurt him so much that love alone wouldn’t be enough. He would have to show Anthony all that he felt, prove to him that he did want him in his life, in whatever way Anthony would have him, and hope that in the end, Anthony would choose him.

But right now, he would be satisfied with having the love of his life back in his arms. And maybe, with Anthony by his side, he would finally be strong enough to face Red John and win. Whatever winning meant, because killing Red John was no longer the end goal. Winning meant stopping Red John, and keeping Anthony and Lisbon, Cho, Van Pelt and Rigsby safe. And he was going to learn to be OK with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! I hope you guys enjoyed this.
> 
> Again, this is the first of the two NCIS Reverse Bang stories that I wrote this year. So I will have another story to post later this month 😉. Come check my next story out on the 25th! In ten days.
> 
> This story is a crossover between NCIS and The Mentalist, and takes place right after the NCIS Season 6 Season Finale s06e25 Aliyah, and The Mentalist's Season 1 Finale, s01e23 Red John's Footsteps. Funny story, they both were aired on the exact same night on 19 May 2009 on CBS. Ten years ago now! The Mentalist stars the gorgeous Simon Baker as Patrick Jane. Check out the [wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mentalist) for more information. I had a really awesome time 'researching' The Mentalist by watching S1 of it all over again. Even bought the DVDs for the season because I couldn't find the show streaming anywhere, and I hadn't watched it since the series ended several years ago. This is absolutely the kind of research I do not mind at all! 😝
> 
> The Reverse Bang original artwork prompt which can be found [here](https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/solariana/7360051/43992/43992_original.png) was made by the lovely [Red_Pink_Dots](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots). She is constantly someone who gently pushes me to explore new and different things, to write things I hadn't thought of writing before, to give me constructive feedback on this and other stories, and to have wonderful discussions both philosophical and mundane. She is absolutely my Elton, the music to my lyrics. I love you, ma cherie! Thank you for the prompt and for all the extra artwork that you and your muse made for this fic! So go check out [her art post](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650197)!
> 
> Again, a huge thank you goes out to my beta [jesco0307](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesco0307/pseuds/jesco0307) Thank you so very much! Your feedback is always spot on and helps make this and other stories of mine so much better. I hope the two new chapters weren't too terrible. I wrote them 2-3 days before the posting date so it was a bit rushed. All remaining errors are mine, of course.
> 
> The music I listened to to write this story was all by Johann Sebastian Bach:  
> * [Prelude No 1 in C Major, BWV 846](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMVkQ70I88) (the first Prelude in the Well Tempered Klavier) which was featured in the season finale of The Mentalist performed by Tzvi Erez  
> * [Cello Suite No 2 in D minor, BWV 1008](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa5yony2CeA) performed by Yo-Yo Ma  
> * [Goldberg Variations, BWV 988](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_sIdXTqXKU) performed by Andras Schiff
> 
> The Prelude was mostly for Chapter 1. The Cello suite for the rest of the fic except for Chapters 5 and 6, and the Goldberg Variations was mostly during Chapters 5 and 6. In case you guys were curious.
> 
> The title of the story is a play on The Mentalist where every episode in the series was titled with something to do with the color red or blood. Also, the Bach Cello Suite is divided into six different movements, one of which is called the "Allemande" which is an elaborate German court dance popular in the 16th century. I liked it because hopefully it signifies the courtly and deliberate dance between all of the parties involved in this story.
> 
> I referenced some episodes of both The Mentalist and NCIS, quoting bits of dialogue from them. The links to the episodes are:  
> * [s01e01 Pilot](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=the-mentalist&episode=s01e01) of The Mentalist  
> * [s06e25 Aliyah](https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=ncis&episode=s06e25) of NCIS
> 
> And of course, a great big thank you to [Jacie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacie/pseuds/Jacie) for organizing this challenge! You're the best!
> 
> Thank you for reading this! I hope to see you guys again in ten days! ❤️❤️❤️  
> -j  
> xoxo

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Sanguine Allemande by jane_x80](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18650197) by [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots)




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